Giving Credit to Willis Eschenbach

December 31st, 2018 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The non-greenhouse theory of Nikolov (and now Zeller-Nikolov) continues to live on, most recently in this article I’ve been asked about on social media.

In short, it is the theory that there really isn’t a so-called “greenhouse effect”, and that the excess planetary surface temperatures on Earth, Venus, and other planets above the Stefan-Boltzmann (SB) temperature calculated from the rate of absorbed solar radiation is due to compressional heating by the atmosphere.

This is a popular alternative explanation that I am often asked about. Of course, if there is no “greenhouse effect”, we don’t have to worry about increasing CO2 in the atmosphere and all of the global warmmongers can go home.

I have posted on this blog many times over the years all of the evidences I can think of to show there really is a greenhouse effect, but it is never enough to change the minds of those who have already convinced themselves that planetary surface temperatures are only a function of (1) absorbed sunlight and (2) atmospheric pressure, as Zeller and Nikolov claim.

I’ve always had the nagging suspicion there was a simpler proof that the Zeller-Nikolov theory was wrong, but I could never put my finger on it. My co-worker, Danny Braswell (a PhD computational physicist) and I have joked over the years that we tend to make problems too difficult… we’ve spent days working a problem when the simple solution was staring us in the face all along.

Enter citizen scientist Willis Eschenbach, a frequent contributor at Wattsupwiththat.com, who back in 2012 posted there a “proof” that Nikolov was wrong. The simplicity of the proof makes it powerful, indeed. I don’t know why I did not notice it at the time. My apologies to Willis.

Basically, the proof starts with the simplified case of the average planetary temperature without an atmosphere, which can be calculated using a single equation (the Stefan-Boltzmann equation). Conceptually, in the absence of an atmosphere, sunlight will heat the surface and the temperature will rise until the rate of emitted infrared radiation from the surface to outer space equals the rate of absorbed solar energy. (To be accurate, one needs to take into account the fact the planet is rotating and spherical, the rate of heat conduction into the sub-surface, and you also need to know the planet’s albedo (solar reflectivity) and infrared emissivity).

The SB equation always results in a surface temperature that is too cold compared to surface temperatures when an atmosphere is present, and greenhouse theory is traditionally invoked to explain the difference.

Significantly, Willis pointed out that if atmospheric pressure is instead what raises the temperature above the S-B value, as the Zeller-Nikolov theory claims, the rate of energy loss by infrared radiation will then go up (for the same reason a hotter fire feels hotter on your skin at a distance). But now the energy loss by the surface is greater than the energy gained, and energy is no longer conserved. Thus, warming cannot occur from increasing pressure alone.

In other words, without the inclusion of the greenhouse effect (which has downward IR emission by the atmosphere reducing the net loss of IR by the surface), the atmospheric pressure hypothesis of Zeller-Nikolov cannot explain surface temperatures above the Stefan-Boltzmann value without violation of the fundamental 1st Law of Thermodynamics: Conservation of Energy.

This is a simple and elegant proof that radiation from the atmosphere does indeed warm the surface above the S-B value. This will be my first go-to argument from now on when asked about the no-greenhouse theory.

I like to give credit where credit is due, and Willis provided a valuable contribution here.

(For those who are not so scientifically inclined, I still like the use of a simple hand-held IR thermometer to demonstrate that the cold atmosphere can actually cause a warmer surface to become warmer still [and, no, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is not violated]).

452 Responses to “Giving Credit to Willis Eschenbach”

…it occurred to me that someone might ask, “What about convective heat loss by the surface once the atmosphere is added?” This actually makes the problems with the Nikolov theory even worse, because now you have to explain how the average surface temperature can be so hot in the face of BOTH (1) more IR energy lost than solar energy gained, AND (2) convective heat loss. With the greenhouse effect added, the average energy lost by the surface balances average energy gained by the surface, which must be the case in the long-term average when there is little or no warming or cooling trend.

Emissivity is not a fudge factor. Real bodies that have complex emission spectra from a range of emitters produce a spectrum similar to a black body in appearance. The black body spectrum assigned to this gives the lowest possible temperature by assigning an unrealistic emissivity of one. Detailed analysis reveals that the emitting bodies exist at a higher temperature and emit less than a black body would because of real bodies having emissivities significantly less than one. This is part of the gain from the black body temperature we find in reality. According to AER who write the transmission code for modelling around 37% of Earths emissions to space comes from cloud whose emissivity ranges from around 0.3 to over 0.9. Due to the mean emissivity of cloud being around 0.65 the average temperature of the cloud is much higher than the assigned black body temperature. This is a real effect and is part of achieving the correct temperature for the clouds. This is obviously true for the atmosphere itself as averaged over all available angles blue sky emissivity is around 0.85, but not unity.

The total energy of a gas molecule is equal to the sum of its kinetic and potential energy, E = ½ mv^2 + mgh. If temperature is proportional to the magnitude of molecular velocity (kT = ½ mv^2) and this velocity decreases with altitude the temperature will decrease, hence a laps rate.

Can the presence of GHG change the boundary at which the earth is effectively a black body?

The earth has a black body temperature less than the temperature at sea level because its effective black body surface is above sea level. It may be the combination of the radiation blocking and the weight of the atmosphere that results in a warmer surface. Neither would have an effect by itself.

Hi David. From data that is exactly how it works except that a significant role in raising the emission height and atmospheric temperature is played by water as a condensing gas for Earth and sulphur dioxide as a condensing gas on Venus. Within both tropospheres the lapse rate is unaffected by the increasing opacity as you descend towards the surface. The lapse rate is essentially adiabatic in both atmospheres to the surface.
There is essentially no greenhouse effect on Mars because without broadening mechanisms the natural line width and no condensing gas operating means that the atmospheric radiance is very very low so the surface emits and does the necessary flux balancing.

Except Keith, in terms of global means you do not need to know how much is clear sky and how much is blocked by cloud except knowing the average specific humidity. All other effects seem to be environmental products which must include the net effects over the diurnal cycle rather than just the nighttime losses.

Roy,
I don’t disagree with you or Willis and accept that the GHE is required, pressure alone cannot warm the surface. But, pressure does play a role in determining the actual surface temperature. But, like GHE, I don’t know how much of a role.

After all, if radiation were the only contributor to the lapse rate, it would be much higher, probably around 9.8 deg C/km, instead of 6.5.

The other problem I have with the details (not the general idea) is that the Earth is not an S-B blackbody. The surface has a huge thermal energy storage capacity due to the oceans, blackbodies have no storage. This causes temperature inertia, how much, how long? Do we know?

Due to the oceans and the large amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, not to mention clouds, it is unclear to me that the CO2 GHE is significant at all. The GHE due to water vapor may be a significant factor. As water vapor goes up, pressure drops and convection (as well as precipitation) goes up. Both pressure changes and increasing CO2 have some effect, but are they measurable or significant? Not sure.

I like simple answers as much as anyone, but they can mislead people. Sometimes the complexity needs to be stated.

The lapse rate in pure radiative energy equilibrium (no convection) is much greater than 9.8 K/km, as I recall around twice that in the lower troposphere, see Fig. 4 in Manabe & Strickler (1964, link below).

Thermal storage is irrelevant in the long term, it only changes the time it takes to reach an equilibrium temperature. Yes, the real world is much more complicated, but no matter how complex the system, you still can’t make 2+2=5.

Sorry about that, I gave the adiabatic lapse rate, the radiative equilibrium lapse rate is much higher and I cannot find a number in the paper with a quick read.

“Thermal storage is irrelevant in the long term, it only changes the time it takes to reach an equilibrium temperature.”

In the context of the climate debate, the time it takes is very important. Some would estimate the time is several thousand years. After all, 90% of the total ocean water is below the thermocline (~900 meters or so) and at a temperature of ~3-4 deg C. This water can only ventilate at the poles, but provides a lot of temperature inertia.

So how do you define “long term?” In the context of the current climate debate and the 178-year instrumental record, 1,000 years or more (maybe up to 6,000 years?) might as well be forever. With reference to the history of the Earth, not so important, with reference to warming since 1850, very important.

Andy, the lapse rate numbers raise an interesting question. The average lapse rate of 6.5 gives us the ~33 C of warming from the emission altitude (around 5 km). However, the dry lapse rate of 9.8 appears to imply we would see 49 C of warming without any water vapor.

Since water vapor represents about 98% of all the GHGs in the atmosphere it seems strange that removing them would lead to warming. Yes, I understand a lot of that is due to the water cycle which essentially bypasses much of the GHE. This seems to imply that the water cycle is far more important than the GHE.

If the water cycle is the driving force for the temperature and already provides negative feedback to the GHE of the other GHG molecules plus its own, then why would adding an insignificant amount of additional GHGs make any difference at all?

Richard, a dry adiabatic projection from the tropopause to the surface as a global mean gives an equilibrium surface temperature of around 310K. This potential temperature is the defective surface temperature as the energy difference is the required energy to vaporise sufficient water to produce the global mean surface specific humidity.
So I agree that this process cools the surface but water as condensed gas (liquid or ice) is also responsible at least partly for the lapse rate gain from the raised emission altitude.

Andy, global means express inherent simplicity. In the vertical, potential temperature is a conserved quantity (ie the dry adiabatic) once corrected for specific latent heat as an addition to the gas specific heat capacity. Gravity controls the system as part of containment and all gravitational bodies exhibit inhomogeneous temperature profiles such that the temperature increases as you descend. The rate of increase of temperature can be traced to the difference in gravitational potential energy expressed through the available energy storage states. Pressure is useful measure of position in the gravitational field as it is the result of the mass above and the mass below. The gradients found are isentropic which are reversible adiabatics.

I agree with Steve Case and wert. Searching N&Z 2017 paper for “compressional” there are no hits so they make no such claim at least in the paper.

When discussing N&Z published work, one has to watch the pea really, really close. Their Tna curve really is for no atm. and NOT for a transparent atm.:

“To calculate the Tna temperatures for planetary bodies with tangible atmospheres, we assumed that the airless equivalents of such objects would be covered with a regolith of similar optical and thermo-physical properties as the Moon surface.”

In their Fig. 4, N&Z plot green dots for planetary measured surface temperatures Ts which include all the natural absorbers in each atm. Venus, Titan and Earth divided by Tna as a function of mean surface pressure. Thus N&Z Fig. 4 red curve INCLUDES all the natural atm. gas absorbers for each atm.

The top post referenced article by Calder states: “Zeller and Nikolov have found that the gaseous composition of atmospheres is immaterial to determining long-term average temperatures.”
This statement is simply not true as Fig. 4 INCLUDES the material gaseous compositions, there is no such finding.

For example, if Earth atm. opacity were reduced to nearly transparent from the actual opacity and still mean 1bar pressure then plotted on Fig. 4, the new green dot Ts/Tna would plot way, way below the red curve at Earth position so Zeller and Nikolov really have found that the gaseous composition of atmospheres is MATERIAL to determining long-term average temperatures.

This finding is well known thus N&Z paper adds nothing novel except their curve fitting process which could be applied to exoplanets IF a case can be made “the airless equivalents of such objects would be covered with a regolith of similar optical and thermo-physical properties as the Moon surface.”

Now please explain to me [or provide a link]: How much of the Green House Effect is caused simply by the atmosphere surrounding the planet?

I’ve wondered about that too.

Air is indeed an excellent insulator, which is why thermal conduction by air is ignored in weather forecast and climate models….convection, radiation, and phase changes (surface evaporation and condensational heating) are the main heat transport processes. -Roy

If there are no gaseous absorbers thus a transparent atm. as Dr. Spencer & WE show, the surface atm. can’t rise in temperature as pressure is increased no matter the pressure.

This is ideal only & non-physical as every gas specie is an absorber/emitter in real nature so total mean surface pressure rising does increase planetary surface temperatures under real conditions based on the actual composition.

Ball4.
Quote,
This is ideal only & non-physical as every gas specie is an absorber/emitter in real nature so total mean surface pressure rising does increase planetary surface temperatures under real conditions based on the actual composition.
Unquote
But the gradient to the surface is independent of optical properties as demonstrated by the measured profiles.

Geoff, the natural gradient T(z) is affected by changes in optical properties of an atm. as the gradient starting point (surface temperature T(0)) changes. The lapse rotates about a point, cf. Manabe-Wetherald 1964 Fig. 4 as T(0) changes.

Ball4. The Manabe-Wetherald model rotates around a mid-point but real atmospheres dont. Earths lower troposphere to the lower condensing level, where opacity is high, is essentially the same as the upper troposphere to the tropopause where opacity is significantly lower. Plus the gradient observed is the same as that proposed without introducing opacity. Real atmospheric lapses in tropospheres run independent of opacity.

Geoff Wood,
The funny thing is that you are in perfect agreement with Manabe. The rotation of the profiles in Figure 4 is not due to opacity! Ball4 should at least read the legends of the figures to which he refers. This would save his readers time to correct his claims

MW: “We therefore computed the pure radiative equilibrium of the atmosphere…and two states of thermal equilibrium”

Notice the use of the word equilibrium which means the principle of 1LOT is employed by which is meant a balance of energy in and out to conserve energy in the control volume.

Geoff then claims essentially real atmospheres do not conserve energy which is what Fig. 4 is constructed around: thermodynamic internal (thermal) equilibrium. Both Geoff and phi should learn that real atmospheres do in fact conserve energy in the observed control volumes of interest. Energy is neither created nor destroyed in real atmospheres which is the principle used in MW Fig. 4.

” I have joked over the years that we tend to make problems too difficult weve spent days working a problem when the simple solution was staring us in the face all along.”

I’ve always said KISS. Okum’s Razor is always the best approach to modeling.

1) In a GasCell 100% of LWIR is absorbed by CO2 at 400ppm at an altitude of about 5 ft.
2) Doubling CO2 simply slightly lowers the level at which 100% is absorbed. IT DOES NOT ALLOW MORE ENERGY TO BE ABSORBED. YOU CAN ONLY ABSORB 100%. ENERGY CAN NOT BE CREATED WITH MORE CO2.
3) The Atmosphere has H20 in it so existing models can’t isolate the impact of CO2.
4) Antarctica is the greatest natural control for H2O and the Urban Heat Island Effect. Antarctica is COOLING with the increase in CO2.
5) MODTRAN demonstrates that CO2 in the lower atmosphere is irrelevant. It is like giving a patient an aspirin after giving them a shot or morphine and then believing the aspirin cured the pain.

The key point is, the more complex you make the arguments, the easier it is for the climate alarmists to win the debate. Because we make it complicated, people will accept expert opinion and “consensus” because they have no other way to refute the evidence. Give everyone a simple example to understand reality and we win. That is why CLimate Alarmists show forest fires without evidence of how fire prevention has greatly increased forest density. It is all smoke and mirrors, you don’t need smoke and mirrors to make the case for a truly settled science.

1) no, it doesn’t… unless you are talking about the very small fraction of total LWIR in a vary narrow range of frequencies near the CO2 absorption line(s).

2)It doesn’t matter how much CO2 you add to the atmosphere, it never becomes completely opaque… that’s why the emission level is lowered in the first place…because 100% IS NOT absorbed. Even Venus with 220,000x times as much CO2, does not have a completely opaque atmosphere. Even if the lower atmosphere is essentially opaque, the upper atmosphere is NOT. So, adding more CO2 still leads to more warming, because upper atmospheric warming will lead to lower atmospheric warming. All atmospheric layers are radiatively coupled to all other layers.

3)Models already take into account the fact that absorption bands overlap… that’s a red herring.

4) the reason Antarctica cools with more CO2 is also explained by theory and has to do with the unique tropospheric unique lapse rate there in winter combined with elevated terrain.

5)MODTRAN is consistent with what is contained in climate and weather forecast models. You’d have to be more specific with your claim.

CO2is Life:
The use of the word ‘falsify’ as per your comment and the link is I think misleading.
According to my Oxford Dictionary,to falsify is to fraudulently alter or misrepresent something – but the dictionary also states that ‘falsify’ can also mean to show to be false.
To avoid confusion, might it be better to comment that ‘observational evidence has thus far shown these IPCC-endorsed claims to be false’?

“2)It doesnt matter how much CO2 you add to the atmosphere, it never becomes completely opaque thats why the emission level is lowered in the first placebecause 100% IS NOT absorbed.”

According to a gascell calculation, 100% of LWIR radiation between 13 and 18 microns is absorbed by about 5 ft into the atmosphere with a CO2 concentration of400ppm.http://www.spectralcalc.com/calc/spectralcalc.php
I don’t think that point is debatable. The transmission of those wavelengths at that altitude is 0.00%. 100% has been thermalized and transferred to other molecules other than CO2. The point I am making is that you can only absorb and thermalize 100% of the LWIR emitted by the earth. More CO2 doesn’t create more energy to absorb. According to the Gas Cell Calculation 100% is absorbed by H20, and adding more CO2 doesn’t alter the energy balance. Once again, adding CO2 is like giving someone an aspirin after giving them a shot of morphine. People are confusing the warming due to H20 and attributing it to CO2.

“3) The Atmosphere has H20 in it so existing models cant isolate the impact of CO2.”

That is my point, Antarctica has very very very little H2O in the atmosphere and no urban heat island effect. Antarctica is the perfect control to isolate the impact of CO2 on the atmosphere. Just look at MODTRAN and change the setting to be looking up from 0.1km, the lower atmosphere where 100% of all ground-based measurements are. Double the CO2 and you will see that absolutely nothing happens to the outgoing LWIR. The reason being is H2O saturates the GHG effect, and additional CO2 is completely irrelevant. H2O is morphine and CO2 is the aspirin. You only see the first signs of a CO2 signature up around 3km AFTER H2O has started to precipitate out of the atmosphere.

“According to a gascell calculation, 100% of LWIR radiation between 13 and 18 microns is absorbed by about 5 ft into the atmosphere with a CO2 concentration of400ppm.http://www.spectralcalc.com/calc/spectralcalc.php
I dont think that point is debatable.”

This is demonstrably wrong… by a wide margin. Actual satellite measurements shows the range of appreciable (not even complete) absorption covers a much narrow range of wavelengths (plot linked below) and even if we use your link and specify a narrow range around 690 cm-1 wavenumber where CO2 absorption is high, the average transmittance through the lowest 1,000 m of atmosphere is still about 50%.

Dr. Spencer, here are all the calculations. Are you saying that If I shine 13 to 18 micron LWIR into a gas cell, much of that radiation will me emitted from the other end? If that is the case. These Gas Cell calculators are worthless. That howeveris good news because it weakens the warmists claims even more if CO2 isn’t absorbing all that radiation in the lower atmosphere.

@Roy W. Spencer –
There was a report from NASA recently about the thermosphere (upper atmosphere) cooling… due to an inactive Sun.
Will this cooling effect eventually trickle down to the other layers, since ‘All atmospheric layers are radiatively coupled to all other layers.’?

DR. Spencer, I think your graphic is generated by looking down from 70km.I think what you are seeing is that at that altitude the only GHG in the atmosphere is CO2, and CO2 is converting the absorbed LWIR of 15 microns to thermal energy. That is why it is touching the 210k black body line. The black body temperature of LWIR between 13 and 18 microns is between -50 to -110 with a peek at -80 degree C.

If you go higher, above 80km where there is no CO2, that dip in the LWIR around 666 wavenumber will disappear.

@Bobdesbond- “NASAs report is NOT recent. It is from 9 years ago.”
Well, it’s ongoing in real-time. That was just one report from back then. Based on what I read, every solar minimum in between solar cycles is when the thermosphere cools.
Here is a more recent update (not from same website) Oct. 26, 2018:
“The Thermosphere Climate Index (TCI) is a relatively new space weather metric that tells us how the top of Earths atmosphere (or thermosphere) is responding to solar activity. During Solar Max the top of our atmosphere heats up and expands. Right now the opposite is happening. Solar minimum is here and the thermosphere is cooling off”
“please be aware that the thermosphere is very far above our headsmore than 100 km high. Just because the rarefied air up there is cooling off, it doesnt mean the surface of the Earth is getting colder. Not yet, at least.”
So it could take a while to trickle down to the other layers.
spaceweatherarchive(dot)com/2018/10/26/a-new-space-weather-metric/

CO2isLife. Most of the band energy from a 300K emitter is at wavelengths less than 13μm. In terms of wavelength accountancy the peak of emission is 10μm and neither water vapour or CO2 absorb in that region.

“The black body temperature of LWIR between 13 and 18 microns is between -50 to -110 with a peek at -80 degree C.”

Just out of curiosity, how are you defining “blackbody temperature”?
Perhaps you mean “equivalent blackbody temperature”?http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Equivalent_blackbody_temperature
[HINT: if this is what you mean, then the statement quoted above is false. So surely you have some other definition that is different than the scientific community.]

“4) the reason Antarctica cools with more CO2 is also explained by theory and has to do with the unique tropospheric unique lapse rate there in winter combined with elevated terrain.”

OK, aren’t some of those conditions also in Greenland and the N Pole? Ground level Antarctica also isn’t showing warming, and the S Hemi is showing less warming. How can CO2, at 400ppm in all places cause such differences in temperature? Do editorial mountain caps show similar cooling? Why does Central England show no warming with an increase in CO2? How can any surface temperature show any cooling at all if CO2 is the cause of warming? CO2 has the same impact on the atmosphere, same physics at the N and it does the S Pole. How can a constant cause a variation? CO2 must be unique is that it can have different effects given different locations, yet the molecule is identical. Does that make sense? No. My bet is that most people would also find it odd that CO2 can cause warming and cooling given near identical conditions.

“5)MODTRAN is consistent with what is contained in climate and weather forecast models. Youd have to be more specific with your claim.”

Looking up from 0.1km, the layer where 100% of all ground measurements are taken, shows 0.00% change in outgoing LWIR with a doubling of CO2. You first see the CO2 signature up about 3km when H2O starts to precipitate out.

Thanks for your comments. My focus is always to simply isolate the impact of CO2. That is how all other fields of science work and that priciples also apply to climate science. The more we work to expose how the scientific method isn’t used in climate science the better our arguments will be received. Thanks again.

My understanding is that the only defined mechanism by which CO2 can affect climate change is through the thermal conversion of 13 to 18-micron LWIR. Those are the only wavelengths relevant to CO2 and the GHGB effect. Therefore every experiment should be designed to isolate the effect of CO2 absorbing those wavelengths, and that phenomenon explains how they cause the observed effect.

phi, pressure alone does not explain the surface temperature. We agree on that point.
Point 2. Pressure alone does not explain the temperature gradient.
Well actually it does. Pressure alone does not explain the pressure gradient because that is the result of containment. Gravity sets the gradient as without it all the gaseous material would fly off into space. Pressure however is a convenient measure of relative energy density within the self gravitating body and so pressure calculations give exactly the same results as those involving gravitational potential energy as pressure already includes gravitational terms.

Apparently the explanation that Zeller and Nikolov have to explain the long term climate shifts other than Milankovitch Cycles, is that volcanism rates vary, which vary the rate of change in atmospheric pressure vs loss of atmosphere to space do to solar wind erosion. They assert the atmosphere has lost 53% of its mass since the Eocene. Short term shifts they assert is due to changes in albedo, which are also partly volcanic driven in changes of atmospheric aerosols and particulates. They also follow the Albedo > GCR connection theory.

So long after dinosaurs were hit by space rock, Earth loses more than 1/2 of it’s atmosphere.
I heard the one about Earth having thicker atmosphere at time of dinosaurs- something an explanation related to better flying for large flying creatures. Anyhow, would Earth be warmer if it had twice as much atmosphere?
I don’t think so.
Less sunlight would reach the tropical oceans, and it gets quite ugly, outside the tropics.
I would guess it would not raise the elevation of the troposphere by much, and raise their .1 bar level by even less.

I’m neither a Z-N or W.E. fanboy, and I’ve read far more of W.E. than Z-N, so I’m not here to either support Z-N or not support them, nor am I here to be be convinced whether they are right or wrong.

My main concern is was the Z-N position accurately and fully characterized by Willis in 2012? Z-N have published since 2012 so what more have they said?

***

If there’s one thing we should all be agreeing on it’s the fact that CO2 can’t drive the ocean temperature nor the climate, because the phasing of CO2 changes follows ocean temperature changes. If CO2 was the ocean warming agent as is widely claimed, the changes in CO2 would precede ocean changes. Here we see CO2 spikes happen after warming spikes:

The current bane of civilization is the dumb idea that the small fractional change in the 0.04% CO2 component of the atmosphere over time has magically created a TOA energy imbalance that is supposed to drive ocean warming and extreme weather events simultaneous with greening the biosphere.

This bad idea (and others) persists from the adherent’s refusal or intellectual inability to acknowledge that per physics net system warming requires additional outside energy, energy that was supplied by a more active sun over several decades.

***

The false solar arguments from commenters will now commence…

No 1 will be ‘sunspots and TSI have been declining’.

No one can make heads nor tails of solar activity until one understands how much solar energy is necessary to just maintain the temperature. Until you answer that in a concrete fashion all established ideas of sunspots and TSI are presently insufficient for understanding reality.

Once one understands there is a solar threshold for net warming one can discern that recent solar cycles exceeded the amount of incoming energy needed for net warming, even as overall activity was declining.

“This bad idea (and others) persists from the adherent’s refusal or intellectual inability to acknowledge that per physics net system warming requires additional outside energy, energy that was supplied by a more active sun over several decades.”

Suppose I have a few windows open in my house in the winter. I don’t have to turn up the furnace (add more outside energy) to warm the house. I can just shut the windows (reduce energy losses while keeping the inputs constant)!

1) This shows that your fundamental idea is wrong. System warming does NOT require additional outside energy as you adamantly claimed.

2) You CAN ‘close window in the atmosphere’! The heat is escaping from the surface in the form of thermal IR. Adding GHGs closes ‘windows’ at various wavelenghts, limiting the ability of IR from escaping to space. Heck the very phrase “atmospheric window” is a thing exactly because there is an “open window” from 8 – 13 um, but ‘closed windows’ at other wavelengths.

GHGs ‘close of the sky’ in the most important way for earths overall energy balance .. by preventing some thermal IR from escaping.

Certainly GHGs so not act like the physical window, blocking the escape of warm air. But the analogy is still quite apt. Rather than closing some windows in some rooms to reduces some of the heat loss from the house, GHGs are ‘closing some windows’ at specific parts of the IR spectrum, reducing some of the heat loss fromn the surface of the earth.

You are the one who started with a fundamental misunderstanding of physics — that only an increase in input can change a system. My analogy pinpointed that error.

As an analogy, it is not intended to explain every last detail — just to highlight your misunderstanding. For that purpose whether one or some or all of the open windows where closed, any of those would show that the temperature can increase without increasing the energy input. Nothing fallacious here.

Theres no talking to you if you cant understand you laid down a fallacious argument first.

The current bane of civilization is the dumb idea that the small fractional change in the 0.04% CO2 component of the atmosphere over time has magically created a TOA energy imbalance that is supposed to drive ocean warming and extreme weather events simultaneous with greening the biosphere.

IR emissivity is independent of non-radiative heat loss. Why would you ratio one with the other to say something about the value of emissivity? Would you confuse thermal conductivity of a material with its specific heat?

But wait, you say, upwelling LWIR power flux is actually measured.
Well, no it’s not.

IR instruments, e.g. pyrheliometers, radiometers, etc. don’t directly measure power flux. They measure a relative temperature compared to heated/chilled/calibration/reference thermistors or thermopiles and INFER a power flux using that comparative temperature and ASSUMING an emissivity of 1.0. The Apogee instrument instruction book actually warns the owner/operator about this potential error noting that ground/surface emissivity can be less than 1.0.

That this warning went unheeded explains why SURFRAD upwelling LWIR with an assumed and uncorrected emissivity of 1.0 measures TWICE as much upwelling LWIR as incoming ISR, a rather egregious breach of energy conservation.

This also explains why USCRN data shows that the IR (SUR_TEMP) parallels the 1.5 m air temperature, (T_HR_AVG) and not the actual ground (SOIL_TEMP_5). The actual ground is warmer than the air temperature with few exceptions, contradicting the RGHE notion that the air warms the ground.

You seem to think being a mechanical engineer makes you qualified to challenge accepted atmospheric science. There are lots of people here with degrees. Your appeal to your own authority carries no weight.

Fresh out of school I sat for the 8 hour exam for the EIT and years later the 8 hour exam to become a registered professional engineer.

I have applied that knowledge for over 35 years where my work has to actually work. I have followed CAGW since 1989 and have read related materials extensively. Much of my work has been peer reviewed on open climate change blogs, not just a closed system of good old boys. My postings are totally my own, not handed to me on a clipboard in some trolls minimum wage cube, and as clearly noted several times based on IPCC AR5 and other references.

Im tired of hearing wet behind the ears millennial sociologist/journalist progressives who know nothing about physics, chemistry, heat transfer, thermodynamics or how the earth heats and cools, who obviously get their science from the MSM propaganda machine and have happily downed the CAGW Kool-Aid, pontificate on global warming, greenhouse gases and the evils of modern mankind.

There is nothing special about climate science. They have to follow the same fundamentals as everyone else.

Now, do you have any specific scientific based criticism or rebuttals to my skeptical postings or just the typical hysterical ad hominem crap?

“Now, do you have any specific scientific based criticism or rebuttals to my skeptical postings or just the typical hysterical ad hominem crap?”

I gave one already — your incorrect application of the definition of emissivity. Here is another.

“TWICE as much upwelling LWIR as incoming ISR, a rather egregious breach of energy conservation.”
Why? where is any energy created or destroyed?? If I receive $161/day into my large bank account, there is nothing to stop me from giving $396/day to a friend, as long as she gives most of it comes back.

Since tempratures are *close* to constant, energy conservation would only be violated if the NET energy in was not equal to the NET energy out.

Nick is correct regarding the First Law. Per the Kielh-Trenberth energy balance diagram, incoming solar radiation at the TOA is 342 Wm-2. That is all you get. There is no magical energy source between the TOA and the earth’s surface. Yet somehow this 342 gets magnified to 590 Wm-2 striking the earth’s surface.

Furthermore, it is up to those proposing an hypothesis to prove it correct via the scientific method. That has not happened.

33 C warmer is rubbish.
The Moon has hotter surface temperature when sun is at zenith as compared to Earth surface temperature at zenith.

One could also say that the average surface of the Moon receives more sunlight than average surface of the Earth [per square meter].
Or if you harvesting solar energy- converting the energy into electrical or thermal energy, one get more sunlight energy per square meter on the Moon as compared to the earth surface.

But lunar surface [it’s “natural” surface] absorbs very little energy as compared to the Earth atmosphere. And the Earth’s ocean absorbs more energy than the Earth’s atmosphere.
Earth sand doesn’t absorb much energy, earth sand put on the Moon, would absorb more energy the lunar “natural” surface does.

Anyhow the Earth’s sand, dirt, or ground, does not absorb much energy, though wet ground absorbs more energy than dry ground. And wet ground does not reach as high temperature as dry ground, as evaporation of water keeps it cooler [it requires a lot energy to evaporate water- and of course that energy is not “lost” but is transformed into H2O in it’s gas state].

So, I would say that since an atmosphere allows there to be ocean, Earth absorbs more sunlight energy than airless Moon and since it absorbs more energy, Earth has higher average temperature and radiates more of energy which it absorbed.
Venus which closer to Sun and about same size as Earth, emits less absorbed sunlight energy than Earth.
Earth absorbs a lot of energy because it’s mostly covered by a transparent ocean.
And since ocean surface temperature does not exceed 35 C, one could also claim ocean cools Earth, but ocean absorbs and retain it’s heat and transport energy so Earth average surface temperature is much higher than average temperature of the lunar surface.
If changed the Moon so it absorbed as much as earth- put water under greenhouses, then you could keep surface from getting as hot [and radiating more energy immediately into space] and have much higher lunar average temperature.

While I have a lot of respect for you Dr Roy Spencer I don’t think the conservation of energy argument is good if the Earth has an atmosphere then it has to be in thermal equilibrium with the atmosphere surrounding it and the pressure of the atmosphere surely forms part of that equilibrium. Why must the earth conserve energy with regard to space we can imagine the earth losing or gaining energy because it is very large and there can be variations it is not an experiment taking place in a laboratory.

“Is it legitimate to apply the Stefan–Boltzmann law to the surface of the Earth once this surface is not the outermost layer of our planet?”

No, not on realistic time scales, too much heat storage and circulation available in the oceans. I accept Roy’s statement that “over the long term” it doesn’t matter. But, in my opinion, the “long term” he is discussing is well over 1000 years and may be over 10,000 years. Deep ocean circulation is affected by the position of the continents and currently the continents are in a very difficult orientation since the deep Atlantic only connects to the other oceans through the Southern Ocean. The Arctic Ocean connection is often covered with ice and shallow. See figure 10 in Win Rost’s post here:https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/20/oceanic-downwelling-and-our-low-surface-temperatures/

James Hansen, et al. (Royal Society Transactions, 2013) claims that the current ice age (past 3 million years or so) has only lowered the deep ocean temperatures about 2 degrees. This is the period that saw the formation of the North Pole ice cap. If the ice cap melted, would it take 3 million years to warm the deep ocean 2 degrees? Probably.

David,
The speed of the Thermohaline circulation (deep-water circulation) is less than 0.1 m/s. A complete circuit around the world takes more than 1500 years. But, water can be ventilated quicker depending upon where it formed, so it is complicated. Arnold Gordon of Columbia U. says deep water can be removed from direct contact with the atmosphere for 100 to a thousand years here:https://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/o_circ.html

1) 288 – 255 = 33 K is both instrumentally measured and calculated from 1LOT as shown in a 1st course on meteorology
2) 333 is not a perpetual loop, the atm. radiates toward surface only as long as the sun shines as it did in the period observed
3) 396 upwelling surface radiation does exist as all massive objects radiate as did the surface in the period observed

Scott Adams is a typical libertarian ideologue. By that I mean that he is convinced that so long as an argument / narrative / rhetorical construct sounds as he calls it “persuasive” then surely that is the one that must be considered correct.

Yet never does he consider the single most significant cognitive factor that is necessary for this to remain logical:

The requirement that he is demonstrably competent in anything climate science.

Scott Adams is not. He is a cartoonist. That is the limits of his skill.

He is also a bad headed moron but really even if he wasn’t the first point is all that is needed to completely dissmiss the relevancy of his “persuasion.”

You have to remember that the GHG theory is just a ‘theory’. If it was totally proven science, there wouldn’t be any competing theories out there.

To me, the whole problem is a manufactured one. You’re comparing the real world temperature to a calculated Stefan-Boltzmann black body temperature and trying to find a reason that they don’t match. Well, how’s this for a reason… A black body is supposed to be black, it’s not supposed to have an atmosphere and it’s certainly not supposed to have a molten core. You know that other planets are also running hotter than their calculated black body temperatures, yet you won’t question the appropriateness of using a black body equation to calculate the theoretical temperature of something that isn’t even close to being a true black body.

Maybe our planet is a bit more dynamic than a black body… and maybe our planet’s temperature is what it is for other reasons.

You have to remember that the GHG theory is just a theory. If it was totally proven science, there wouldnt be any competing theories out there.

Funny.

The greenhouse effect is a fact. There is no doubt that it exists, whatsoever.

But there are always conspiratorialists and quacks and charlatans who are very good at pretending to find holes and problems and putting forth ridiculous alternative ideas. These people aren’t using science, so scientific arguments will not change their minds. There is, literally, no evidence that will change their minds. Ultimately it’s sad.

Yes, this is correct, but it is a creative way to force people to examine both sides. RIght now Meet the Press can simply ban the opposing views. This approach KISS and makes it interesting and understandable for the non science crowd. That is how to win this war. Not my arguing over how many angles can hit in the head of a pin, but by presenting the public with clear and easy to understand options.

The sun and all of it’s associated secondary effects ranging from an increase in geological activity, to lower overall oceanic sea surface temperatures ,to an increase in global cloud/snow coverage, to a less zonal atmospheric circulation pattern.

True. The surface warms the atmosphere. However, PV = nRT explains why temperature decreases with altitude given that the volume of the atmosphere is fairly constant. It also reveals CO2, at 0.04% mass, as being unable to warm the atmosphere any more than a few hundredths of a degree C.

Nitrogen and oxygen, making up nearly 99% mass of the atmosphere, are the real warming agents of the atmosphere.

nick…”Q = U A dT explains why the surface is warmer than TOA same reason as the insulated walls of a house in winter”.

Don’t you think the TOA being bordered by space at nearly 0K has something to do with the difference? The atmosphere has to act as a buffer between the surface and TOA since the conduction of heat through the atmosphere is very low.

Wood explained that surface radiation has little effect in cooling the surface. He explained the greenhouse effect as air heated by direct conduction at the surface rising and being slow to release the heat due to the property of gases to retain heat.

Wood was a world renowned expert on radiation by gases. He was consulted by Niels Bohr on radiation from sodium vapour.

Roy would you agree with Dr Nic Lewis that the cumulative effect of co2 emissions ( sensitivity) would be about about half of the projection of IPCC AR5?
IOW if all human co2 emissions ceased today what would be the impact after 1,000 years? Do you broadly agree with Dr Lewis? Thanks.

Roy: One might put Willis’s proof more simply. Temperature is internal energy and energy must have units of mass*distance^2/time^2. Force has units of mass*distance/time^2. Force must move something a distance before it becomes work/energy. Nothing created by a static force can have units of energy and therefore must violate the law of conservation of energy if it is treated as energy.

Temperature is a measure of internal energy, not internal energy itself. Internal energy is both heat and work. It is the motion of atomic vibration, as work, and the heat that increases the vibration/work.

However, heat and work are equivalent therefore internal energy is thermal energy, aka heat. Clausius, who coined the definition of internal energy, U, claimed it was made up of internal work and heat whereas external work and heat controlled the internal energy.

In other words, temperature is a measure of heat. Or, you could say it’s a measure of work provided you use the heat equivalent of work, as laid out by Joule, the scientist.

The distinction between temperature and heat is that heat is a real phenomenon related to atomic motion, whereas temperature is a human invention developed to measure relative levels of heat.

Here is why Tony Heller should be at the forefront of the climate debate.
It is because exposing the misleading, deceptions, and lies of alarmists is more convincing than arguing fizzix about how many molecules of CO2 it takes to melt a sugar cube.

While you are bickering here People who actually have the power of making the decisions are trying to take control over the energy production and destroy the economy under the pretense of global warming without having actual scientific education or credibility, all they have is political ideology to pursue,
they will listen to the “scientists” who tell them what they want to hear and they will “fund” (bribe) the “scientists” (climate whores) who produce the results that are expected from them.

eben…”Here is why Tony Heller should be at the forefront of the climate debate”.

Impressive guy. Incredible credentials.

As he put it, the shenanigans of NOAA and NASA would never be permitted in the private sector, with outfits like Intel, for whom he worked for 20 years as a chip designer. He worked on the i7 processor project, and the i7 is THE processor of choice by most motherboard manufacturers for a fast processor.

After watching the Heller talk at your second link, I have demoted NOAA and NASA GISS to the scumbag category.

NOAA and GISS both agreed up till the 1980’s that the planet had cooled between 1940 and 1970. GISS has now erased that cooling and replaced it with faked warming.

Heller describes how NOAA and GISS have faked data to show warming where there was none. He explained how the 1930’s and 40s were the hottest decades in the US, with 1936 showing warming and heat waves that have never been duplicated. Not even close.

There is a potential flaw in this. It depends on how the atmosphere is added, but also, one must consider the entire system, not only the planet part.

So, this atmosphere seems to appear from nowhere. I’m going to assume, for the sake of my argument, that it appears 1,000 miles above the planet. As it falls in the planet’s gravitational field, it will gain kinetic energy. A bunch of atmospheric molecules gaining kinetic energy is the same as a temperature increase.

Note, these particles were created. As such, and being created above the planet, they represent an increase of kinetic energy in the system. The surface of the planet WILL increase slightly. After that, the entire suns/planet system will come to a new equilibrium.

If the particles originate from the planet, then there will be a cooling effect. In effect, you have evaporated a substance from the planet. Evaporation cools. You have to account for all the energy of, added to, or subtracted from the system. In Willis’ example, he ADDED atmosphere – so you can change his argument, but that’s not what he said.

You are incorrect Nick, many published papers determine ocean emissivity really is measured around 0.97 give or take a couple .01s from surface and airborne wide swaths. You can bring the science and prove yourself wrong by using google string or similar: ocean emissivity measurement

IR instruments, e.g. pyrheliometers, radiometers, etc. dont directly measure power flux. They measure a relative temperature compared to heated/chilled/calibration/reference thermistors or thermopiles and INFER a power flux using that comparative temperature and ASSUMING an emissivity of 1.0.

The Apogee instrument instruction book actually warns the owner/operator about this potential error noting that ground/surface emissivity can be less than 1.0.

That this warning went unheeded explains why SURFRAD upwelling LWIR with an assumed and uncorrected emissivity of 1.0 measures TWICE as much upwelling LWIR as incoming ISR, a rather egregious breach of energy conservation.

This also explains why USCRN data shows that the IR (SUR_TEMP) parallels the 1.5 m air temperature, (T_HR_AVG) and not the actual ground (SOIL_TEMP_5). The actual ground is warmer than the air temperature with few exceptions, contradicting the RGHE notion that the air warms the ground.

Nick says that. I said many published papers determine ocean emissivity at about 0.97 from measurements. Look them up, bring some science and correct yourself, you can start with actually reading them & can start with google: ocean emissivity measurement

I have no clue where you came up with a value of “Ocean absorbs, but it loses significant amounts through non-radiative (conduction, convection advection, latent) and radiation. Ocean emissivity could be on the order of 15% to 20%.”

Please just quit with making stuff up. We already have JDHuffman and Gordon Robertson for that, we do not need a third one.

I think you would be better off to stick to the area of your expertise: “As a degreed and registered mechanical engineer, I have a professional, legal and financial obligation to get it right.”

You are no physicist and certainly not a scientist of any value.
I am sure you are very good at mechanical engineering, just as Gordon Robertson was good at repairing electronic equipment.

But you demonstrate zero ability in science since you do no research and make up nonsense that is totally wrong.

Roy says
“Conceptually, in the absence of an atmosphere, sunlight will heat the surface and the temperature will rise until the rate of emitted infrared radiation from the surface to outer space equals the rate of absorbed solar energy. (To be accurate, one needs to take into account the fact the planet is rotating and spherical, the rate of heat conduction into the sub-surface, and you also need to know the planets albedo (solar reflectivity) and infrared emissivity).”

What about heat from the earth’s core, is that included in the calculation ?

There are three main sources of heat in the deep earth: (1) heat from when the planet formed and accreted, which has not yet been lost; (2) frictional heating, caused by denser core material sinking to the center of the planet; and (3) heat from the decay of radioactive elements.

“Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes around the world to estimate that some 44 terawatts (44 trillion watts) of heat continually flow from Earths interior into space.”

Same for the oceans. Anyone claiming a greenhouse effect does warm the surface is implicitly claiming that the atmosphere warms the deep oceans some 20K above the famous 255K, or > 75K above the average Lunar surface temperature.
The heat content (~temperature) of the deep oceans is completely caused by geothermal heat, the sun only maintains a slightly warmer surface layer, that insulates the deep oceans from the atmosphere (and space)

OK, thanks David,
I guess that’s why the poles stay frozen,
but it’s a bit surprising to me considering the earth’s core is around 6000 C and molten rock is constantly spewing forth at the plate boundaries through volcanoes etc.

The poles stay frozen because the spherical shape reduces the incoming power flux to a few hundreds of W/m^2.
1,368 W/m^2*cos(latitude)
Ask any HVAC engineer accounting for the slanted sunlight.
That and months of zero ISR.

Nick…”The poles stay frozen because the spherical shape reduces the incoming power flux to a few hundreds of W/m^2″.

Yes. And during the winter, the solar energy disappears altogether. In the Arctic Ocean, the water freezes to a depth of 10 feet. There is not enough time in the brief Arctic summer for all the ice to melt.

Roy…”I’ve always had the nagging suspicion there was a simpler proof that the Zeller-Nikolov theory was wrong…”

What if the Nikolov-Zeller theory is wrong altogether? This is a quote from their paper:

“Hence, more than 60% of Earth’s 90 K atmospheric effect appears to remain inexplicable in the context of the current theory. Furthermore, satellite- and surface-based radiation measurements have shown [12-14] that the lower troposphere emits 42-44% more radiation towards the surface (i.e. 341-346 W m-2) than the net shortwave flux delivered to the Earth-atmosphere system by the Sun (i.e. 240 W m-2). In other words, the lower troposphere contains significantly more kinetic energy than expected from solar heating alone, a conclusion also supported by the new 90 K GE estimate”.

I think this theory is wrong. They are claiming that 1% of the atmosphere representing GHGs can radiate more radiation toward the surface than solar energy. They do not specify what EM frequency bands are represented nor the intensity of radiation in those bands.

Solar SW energy is converted to IR by the surface, then that IR is radiated from the surface. How much of that IR is absorbed by 1% of atmospheric GHG gases and how can that 1% radiate back more radiation than the radiation that produced the GHG radiation in the first place?

There is an amplification of radiation there that contradicts all known laws in physics. Furthermore, losses in the system are disregarded.

I don’t buy their claim that the back-radiated energy has been measured by satellites and ground instruments. The figure came from the Kiehle-Trenberth energy budget and they admitted to fabricating it, not measuring it.

You quoted the 1st law of thermodynamics which is not a general law of conservation of all energy forms. The first law is specifically about mechanical energy as work and thermal energy as heat. Granted, heat is involved in most energy type processes.

It can be described as the relationship between heat, work and internal energy. And it specifically prohibits the kind of perpetual motion suggested by a system that converts solar SW to IR, then recycles that energy via GHGs to raise the temperature of the surface.

The first law in integral form is (delta U) = Q – W. That is, the change in internal energy is the heat supplied to a system minus the work done by the system.

There is nothing in the 1st law that refers to radiation as electromagnetic energy. There is, of course, a relationship between EM and heat but it’s not as apparent as many make out.

You cannot sum EM as IR in the 1st law without relating it directly to heat, and heat can only be transferred one way, from an area of higher potential energy to an area of lower potential energy. The reverse process, from a colder lower potential to a hotter higher potential is only possible with compensation from external sources.

If you consider the heat dissipation involved in decreasing pressure in the atmosphere, that in itself satisfies the 1st law, does it not, provided you can regard the volume as being fairly constant?

delta U = Q – pdV

In a piston, pdV represent the work done. Gravity acts on air molecules to produce the same effect without changing the volume. I don’t know how you’d change pdV in the 1st law to represent the force of gravity and the way gravitational force changes with altitude.

There has to be an effect, however, since the air pressure at the top of Mt. Everest, at nearly 30,000 feet, is 1/3rd of the air pressure at sea level. How else can you explain that pressure reduction without a decreasing gravity gradient with altitude?

The temperature at 30,000 feet is proportionately lower. That has to be related to decreasing pressure in a gas with fairly constant volume.

I am aware that the gravity induced change in pressure is disregarded in atmospheric physics in lieu of lapse rate. However, lapse rate cannot explain the decrease in pressure from sea level to the peak of Everest.

I can accept your argument that rising air columns and general convection place a part but I still think there is a steady-state effect from gravity.

This brings up something I’ve wondered about for awhile. The answer is probably simple enough but I just haven’t seen it.

The sun heats the surface and, directly or indirectly, the surface air. In summer it gets very hot, from a human perspective. I understand hot air cooling as it rises It expands because the space available increases. The temperature thus drops even though the air does not loose heat energy, the energy just becomes less concentrated. The air get very cold at a high enough altitude, but still retains most of its original energy. However, high altitude per se doesn’t prevent high temperatures. Air can get very hot, even plasma hot, when lightning passes through it. It is just a matter of energy concentration per volume of air, no?

In the summer temperatures here are often over 100F and sometimes reach 110 and higher. In the winter, like now, the very same sun, only coming from a low southern angle, manages a barely adequate 60F on good days. My understanding is that much of the solar energy is being absorbed or reflected away by the greater amount of air it has to travel through to reach the surface in winter, thus there is less heating because there is less energy delivered to the surface.

Over many years I’ve spent many days hiking in the mountains. I generally prefer 6000 feet +. In addition to enjoying walking through unpeopled spaces, seeing continuously changing aspects of terrain and local life, I like to get up there in the summer to get away from the high valley temperatures. Here is where my understanding fails.

The sunshine passes through less atmosphere at high altitudes. The shorter, more energetic wavelength are definitely more intense as shown by the greater tendency to burn the skin. However, even in protected spots (but open to the sun), on very still days, the temperature is much lower than at lower altitudes.

>>>>There seems to be no intrinsic bar to the atmosphere heating, the energy input is actually higher than on the valley floor, no doubt the local air also cools adiabatically as it raised to still higher altitudes, but why does that greater solar energy input produce so much less immediate local heating?<<<>>Is anything specific actually known? Does the greenhouse effect retain energy longer than adiabatic cycling? For a given time period, does the greenhouse effect retain more energy than adiabatic cycling? By what ratio?<<<<

“In the summer temperatures here are often over 100F and sometimes reach 110 and higher. In the winter, like now, the very same sun, only coming from a low southern angle, manages a barely adequate 60F on good days. My understanding is that much of the solar energy is being absorbed or reflected away by the greater amount of air it has to travel through to reach the surface in winter, thus there is less heating because there is less energy delivered to the surface.”

One also has angle of the ground to the sunlight.
Or if point something at the sun, it gets more sunlight as compared to having something on level surface and sun being, say 30 degree above horizon. Or this why one tilts a solar panel depending on your latitude.
So yes, when sun is low above horizon, it must go thru more atmosphere, but it also matters what angle the surface is in regards to sun.
Or if in England, solar panel placed closer to vertical, and in tropics they are level to the ground

“The sunshine passes through less atmosphere at high altitudes. The shorter, more energetic wavelength are definitely more intense as shown by the greater tendency to burn the skin. However, even in protected spots (but open to the sun), on very still days, the temperature is much lower than at lower altitudes.”

At altitudes have lower air temperature. Higher altitudes do not increase amount solar energy by much.
Or thicker part of atmosphere, is about 10 km high [troposphere] if you are say 1 to 2 km above sea level, it going thru less than 10%
as compared to sea level. If sun at 30 degrees above horizon, the sun going thru twice as much atmosphere.

If in tropics [it’s simpler] and sun is at zenith at noon, it lower by 15 degrees per hour, or from 90 at noon, by 3 pm it’s at 45 degrees above horizon, and it’s not until 4 pm that sunlight has to go twice as much atmosphere. At higher latitude, the curve is flatter [and get longer hours of daylight in summer].

Anyways what matters in terms of feeling warm is air temperature and how dry the air is, or your body cools mostly from evaporation and air convectional heat loss.

Using a single number to represent global warming, like 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius of global warming, makes it hard to see how bad the problem really is. Is 2.0 degrees Celsius of global warming a major change from what we have now, or is it a minor change?

What is the solution to this problem? The answer is to look at temperature distributions, rather than single numbers. Temperature distributions make global warming multi-dimensional, rather than a one-dimensional number. Temperature distributions show how the temperature varies with latitude, elevation, proximity to the ocean, size of landmass, and many other factors.

Comparing the normal temperature distribution, to a global warming temperature distribution, makes it easier to judge the size of the problem. Are alarmists trying to turn a molehill into a mountain? Or are deniers trying to turn a mountain into a molehill?

This article will show you the temperature distributions for a range of global warming amounts. People with weak hearts should not look at the more extreme amounts of global warming. Seeing 10.0 or 15.0 degrees Celsius of global warming on a graph, may be too much for those with a vivid imagination.

Roy…I think your data at UAH is screaming out to us that radiation from the atmosphere has little or no effect on the surface. Excepting that strong 2016 El Nino warming, we’ve had little or no warming for 20 years.

I know you disagree, but to me, your data is confirming the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Increasing CO2 is not warming the surface and I think the GHE cannot be explained by radiation.

You should take a look at the video posted by Eben with Tony Heller. This guy is no lightweight, he has worked as a troubleshooter in quality control for Intel and he made himself a name as a stickler for accuracy.

He was an alarmist till 2003 but cursory observations of colder weather than what he expected in a global warming environment converted him. Since 2003, he has applied his experience in quality control to NOAA and GISS data, revealing their surface data as a scam.

However, he misrepresents some important science, and then attacks that straw man. He does a fine job showing that CO2 does not control the climate — but no one says it does! CO2 is only one of many factors that influence climate. Basically, he argues that if CO2 does not control everything, then the only other options is that it controls nothing. Clearly a false dichotomy.

tim…”Basically, he argues that if CO2 does not control everything, then the only other options is that it controls nothing”.

Tim…that’s not the message I took away. Heller does talk a good deal about CO2 but the message for me is that the relationship between CO2 and warming is being misrepresented by the likes of NOAA and GISS intentionally to make it appear as if CO2 is having a critical impact on warming/climate.

In one graph he showed an attempt to create a one to one (linear) relationship between warming and CO2 that made him laugh. He said something to the effect of, ‘come one, guys, you can do better than that’.

Heller is nobody’s fool. With a degree in geology and another in electrical engineering he has worked on critical projects for Intel and the likes where a simple data error could cost the company big bucks. He earned a reputation as a guy who could root out errors in the work of others.

That’s what he has been looking for in the data, adjustments and discrepancies. And he has found far more than he had bargained for.

When a scientist with his pedigree makes outright claims of deliberate fudging and scams, it means he has found far more than slight data errors.

Heller expressed bemusement at NOAA and GISS’s audacity in trying to get away with their chicanery. The sad part is that they have gotten away with it, enabled by the previous Democratic Party/Obama administration.

Heller has a degree in geology and electrical engineering. He has worked as a quality control authority at Intel and in directly related fields on climate modeling. He has applied his experience in quality control to data from institutions like NOAA, GISS, and the IPCC, finding fraudulent claims all over the place.

According to NASA, Saturn generates twice as much heat through “internal processes” than it receives from solar isolation. Somebody needs to tell Saturn that all its heat of gravitational compression happened long ago, and it shouldn’t be generating heat anymore. Jupiter too.

On Earth, the average ocean surface temperature is about 17 C and average the land surface air is about 10 C.
And I don’t know the average surface temperature in terms of average temperature of the cloud tops.

Ktm was making the point (sarcastically) that if Saturn can still be compressing and warming gravitational, then so can the earth (presumable trying to support N&K). I was merely pointing out that the circumstances on the two planets are so completely different that we can’t directly draw conclusions about one planet due to the observations on another planet.

Saturn, being a gas giant can still be getting smaller and converting gravitational PE into thermal energy.

Earth, being a solid/liquid ball cannot still be getting smaller and converting gravitational PE into thermal energy.

The S/B equation applied to an imaginary object is NOT proof of “excess planetary surface temperatures on Earth”. It is not even “evidence” of such.

For example, I could use an imaginary flat surface, perfectly insulated on the back. Applying the S/B equation, the flat surface would reach a temperature of 361 K (88 °C, 190 °F)
But, Earth’s average temperature is 288 K. Is the flat surface a “simple and elegant proof” that Earth’s atmosphere cools the planet 73 degrees C?

Of course not.

Different people have different definitions of the GHE, but the Institiutionalized Pseudoscience definition involves the atmosphere acting as a “heat source”. That’s impossible.

But it is correct that a hand-held IR thermometer does not violate 2LoT. The IR thermometer involves both adding intelligence and energy to the system, reducing entropy. Exactly as required by 2LoT.

Applying the S/B equation, the flat surface would reach a temperature of 361 K (88 C, 190 F) … on the one the side always exposed to 960 W/m^2 of sunlight.

And it would reach 2.7 K on the back side, which is never exposed to sunlight. The “average” surface temperature would be 182 K as it floats through the vacuum of space.

This example is really neither here nor there.

Now you could make it much more interesting by imagining some CO2 above each side (or maybe a simple glass sheet above each side). You should find that the back side is still 2.7 K, but the front side will become warmer than 361 K. *THAT* would be a good analogy for the GHE.

How do you apply an equation that was derived from an electrically-heated platinum filament , between 700C and 1500C, to the Earth’s atmosphere where temperatures vary widely over the surface.

You can’t.

How do you apply it to an Earth with no atmosphere or oceans with a similar range of temperatures due to the angle with which the Earth strikes the tilted Earth?

You can’t. Gerlich and Tscheuschner reasoned there is not enough computing power to apply S-B correctly. That’s why we have the fictitious GHE, it’s nothing more than an error in applying S-B. The warming can be explained better in other ways.

JD…”The S/B equation applied to an imaginary object is NOT proof of excess planetary surface temperatures on Earth. It is not even evidence of such”.

Happy New Year.

There are other issues as well. According to Gerlich and Tscheuschner, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant does not apply at terrestrial temperatures in our atmopshere. Furthermore, the T^4 does not work either, other than in the range of 700C to 1500C from whence it was derived. It’s little wonder there is a discrepancy between the guestimated temperature based on S-B and the actual temperature.

Gordon, let’s not jump in that rabbit hole. There is no need to try to disclaim established physics in order to discredit pseudoscience. The S/B equation is valid for these purposes, if used correctly.

“But now the energy loss by the surface is greater than the energy gained, and energy is no longer conserved. Thus, warming cannot occur from increasing pressure alone.

In other words, without the inclusion of the greenhouse effect (which has downward IR emission by the atmosphere reducing the net loss of IR by the surface), the atmospheric pressure hypothesis of Zeller-Nikolov cannot explain surface temperatures above the Stefan-Boltzmann value without violation of the fundamental 1st Law of Thermodynamics: Conservation of Energy.”

You said without the greenhouse effect, rather than saying greenhouse gases. Can you say without greenhouse gases?

In nature it would be unusual not to have some impurities which are called greenhouse gases- and Earth is oddity in terms of how little CO2 gas it has in the atmosphere. And this oddity probably relates to it having life. Also that Earth is currently in a icebox climate and having a cold ocean.

Also in the pseudo science of the greenhouse effect theory, clouds seem to be called greenhouse gases, and it seems perhaps, it would be even more odd for planet with an atmosphere not to have any clouds.
And ozone also doesn’t trap IR heat, yet it’s called a greenhouse gas. And though I have not seen it attempted, I imagine it’s possible to include dust as being a greenhouse gas.

But I tend to see Zeller-Nikolov as also being pseudo science or it’s vaguely somewhat correct, sort of. I can’t defend it as it’s unclear [and I disagree with it].

I think think Venus has hot surface because Venus has acid clouds and the clouds act as surface which is warmed by the sunlight, but appears these acid clouds are called a greenhouse gas.

Zeller-Nikolov seems to go into the deep end when it seems to suggest that gravity creates energy or heat. And similar to greenhouse effect theory talking about trapping heat or causing warming.
Earth has the thermosphere in which it’s gas are somewhere 1000 C and this temperature of gas doesn’t heat anything due to it’s low density. If the gas had sea level density, it would be hotter than Venus. Or it’s said it is hot due to the average velocity of the gas molecules.

Or roughly speaking all of Earth’s atmosphere- except this higher atmosphere- has gas molecules traveling at about the same speed.
And though Venus is not like Earth, it’s about the same with Venus- roughly speaking all gas molecule have about the same average velocity.
And gas the near the surface is warmer, because it has a higher amount of gas molecules in a given volume, such as cubic meter volume of gas.
And it does have higher amount gas molecules in given volume, because of gravity.

The above isn’t why Earth is warm.
First, Earth currently isn’t warm. 15 C is not warm.
Earth is not 15 C. It normally is not 15 C. Only small part of Earth has average temperature of around 15 C.
One could say the tropics is warm enough for humans [which is a tropical creature]. Outside the tropics is too cold for the human creature without human technology.
So we living in an Ice Age and one could ask why is it so cold.
Or why has Earth appeared to warmer in the past, and in last million years or so Earth average temperature has been cooler.

It’s fair to say that the tropics is warm. Why is the tropics warm?
The tropics is 40% of Earth surface area and about 80% of this area is ocean.
And the tropical ocean is said to be the heat engine of the rest of the world. Or outside the the tropics, a reason it’s warmer than is might seem like it should be, is due to Earth’s heat engine causing it to be warmer.

Why is the tropics warm? Why average temperature so high?
It does rain a lot in the tropics and it has a lot of water vapor in the tropical atmosphere. Something like four times more water vapor as compared to outside of the tropics.
Or in terms percentage of global water vapor it some times said to be 0 to 4%. And 0% is region outside the tropics.

The pseudo science of greenhouse effect says it’s because of water vapor, that Earth is warm. Or one could more correctly say water vapor of the tropics. Or more precisely because the tropics has thick surface layer of warm water.
Why does the tropics have a lot of water vapor or warm surface layer of water.
A sect of the global warming religion believes that it is entirely due to CO2. And term used is that CO2 is a forcing or radiant forcing and water vapor isn’t.

Anyhow, the tropical surface receives the most amount of sunlight and the ocean absorbs both direct and indirect sunlight and as said the ocean surface covers about 80% of the tropics.

Gravitational pressure can do no net work, so the N&Z idea fails there and then. However, while the GHE provides an explanation for the elevation of temperatures, I am not convinced it is the explanation.

By that I mean that, while one must assuredly take account of the radiative properties of the atmosphere to arrive at a precise description, it is not demonstrated to my satisfaction that this explains the entire alleged Earthly 33K gap between the basic BB solution and the observations.

The simple calculation I have seen for mean blackbody temperature for a sphere with near unity emissivity is

T = (S*(1-a)/(4*sigma))^0.25

For (using round figures)

S = 1360 W/m^2
a = 0.3
sigma = 5.7e-8 W/m^2/K^4

this gives

T = 254 K

The GHE is invoked to provide the roughly 33K discrepancy with observations.

However, this calculation is really not right. Proper calculation of mean incoming and outgoing flux should result in

T = (S*(1-a)/(pi*sigma))^0.25

This produces a mean temperature of 270K, which makes up for 16K of the discrepancy. Add in some heat capacity to reduce temperature loss on the night side, and I suspect you could make up a lot of that.

In general, the calculations include enough fudge factors that they can be made to agree with most observations. But, mere agreement with observations is not enough to establish a theory. The observational base must be rich enough to exclude other reasonable explanations. Unfortunately, we cannot conduct end-to-end experiments on planetary atmospheres, and the observational base is inherently sparse.

If you really want to nitpick, when the annual cycle in Earth’s declination angle and Earth-sun distance are accounted for, the well-known So/4 expression for the mean solar irradiance of a spherical Earth becomes So/4.003 for Earth as an oblate spheroid, where So is the TSI. So there’s that, knock yourself out changing meteorological text books.

The flaw in the standard derivation is in the following. For balance, we have

S*(1-a)*A1 = sigma*T^4*A2

It is assumed A1 = pi*r^2, being the area facing the Sun, and A2 = 4*pi*r^2, being the entire surface area. Plugging these in leads to the standard formula.

However, the equation above is a kluge. We are illuminating an area A1, and dissipating from an area A2, but the regions only partially overlap, and T is not physically well-defined. We can address this flaw by specifying the temporal, cyclical nature of the input.

The source is a half-wave rectified sinusoid, for which the average value is the peak S divided by pi (this is assuming the Sun is above the equator, so that is a bit of a kluge, too, but its a better kluge, because it does at least hold at specific times of the year).

Thus, for a given incremental area dA, we have

S*(1-a)/pi * dA = sigma*T^4 * dA

from which, we get

T = (S*(1-a)/(pi*sigma))^0.25

There is an additional kluge involved here, as I am assuming the fourth root of the average is, at least approximately, equal to the average of the fourth root. This is where heat capacity comes in.

The heat capacity of the Earth smooths the temperature so that it does not vary so widely as the input, and a signal that doesnt vary a lot will generally have the fourth root of the average approximately equal to the average of the fourth root.

That’s wrong Bart, the sun shines continuously (varies 0.1% peak to trough in the ~11yr. sinusoid) so is very nearly a constant TSI; the sun is always on so use So/4.003 for Earth as an oblate spheroid if you like better precision. 255K is proven by observation not your 270K.

Now, in high winter or summer, this is not entirely true, due to the tilt of the Earth’s spin axis. That is why I specified that the Sun was to be considered as being within the equatorial plane. That is another factor that would need to be added in to get a more precise yearly average.

But, the equation I have written is correct under the equatorial plane assumption, based upon taking both the temporal and spatial averages of a time varying input, which the standard formula fails to do in rigorous fashion.

Bart, the frame of reference is irrelevant for energy balances, you have not correctly adjusted your frame to the sun being constant not half wave rectified. You will be laughed out of any meteorological conference trying to show the source sun TSI variation is other than ~0.1% from SORCE radiometer data in the ~11 year solar TSI peak to trough.

The 255K is proven by observation from satellite radiometers over 4-12+ year annual periods & is not your faulty ref. frame calculation of 270K.

Think of it symmetrically. Is the Earth spinning with respect to the Sun? Or, is the Sun revolving once per day about the Earth? They are kinematically equivalent. Without measurements of centripetal acceleration at multiple latitudes, or reference to other celestial bodies, we would have no way of knowing.

For the purposes of this exercise, you can choose either description. Try thinking of it from the POV of the Sun revolving about the Earth. Now, does it become clearer?

“No, the frame of reference is absolutely essential for energy balances”

In each & every frame of reference energy MUST be conserved & in your frame you have failed to conserve energy with the surface equilibrium at 270K because you have not properly performed the frame of ref. conversion for the sun’s input balanced with surface output. Simple as that. See W.E.’s proof and Dr. Spencer’s top post.

Energy conservation is very basic Bart, without it in your frame of ref. you have nothing but faulty work.

I have properly performed the frame of reference conversion. It is the standard formulation that does not. It is a kluge in which it is implicitly assumed that every spot on Earth is being simultaneously irradiated by 1/4th the instantaneous power. That is not the situation that exists in reality. The time dependence must be taken into account.

You have not had enough time to digest this. I suggest you do so before responding again. Hopefully, then, with something more concrete.

I encourage you again to look at the plot I referenced above. 255K, or 270K? Which is it?

Your half-wave rectified sinusoid MUST be adjusted to have an RMS energy in your ref. frame same as the SORCE measured input data in equilibrium over 4-12+ annual periods. Your surface cannot achieve equilibrium radiating at 270K with sun source input. W.E.’s and Dr. Spencer’s arguments top post are sound no matter the ref. frame.

255K is the correct energy conserved equilibrium balance in all and any ref. frames you care to choose. 1LOT is universal, not dependent on ref. frame.

The key thing you are missing is that temperature is not constant over the Earth, so the average cannot be computed from an assumed constant input. The temperature must be first assumed to be time varying, and the mean of that variation computed.

There is no violation of energy conservation here. The output is not higher than SB predicts, because the SB is used in the computation, and it is all of a piece.

Thanks for your support, JD, but I am not merely trying to enrage here. I am trying to actually get concepts across, and hectoring is counterproductive. Ball4 is a smart guy. I’m simply trying to get him to think things through.

Only if you do not conserve energy in your frame & that’s what you are doing – this is so blatantly obvious that Bart is just spluttering in denial right now.

You have not shown the RMS input of your ref. frame equals the sun source data over 4-12 annual periods. You can’t because you do not conserve energy. 240in = 240out is what you need to show and you can’t with the surface radiating at 270K, you have failed the most basic concept of energy conservation.

There is no conservation of energy problem, Ball4. You are engaging in circular reasoning. You think there is a COE problem because you think the temperature should be 255K, and if it is 270K, there is a problem. But, the temperature should not be 255K. It should be 270K.

The whole derivation rests upon SB. It cannot be violating SB by construction.

Bart can only do so if the oblate spheroid surface radiates at 255K, the problem remains that Bart’s half-wave rectified sinusoid input results in too high a radiating temperature, Bart’s input is not adjusted to equal nature’s measure input of 240 or Bart would have shown that by now.

“You think there is a COE problem because you think the temperature should be 255K, and if it is 270K, there is a problem.”

Not at all. 240in has to be equal to 240out in ANY ref. frame equilibrium. Show your work to prove something radiating at 270K as you compute is equal to 240out in YOUR ref. frame. The root problem as I’ve written all along is your RMS input is too high resulting in 15K too high an equilibrium temperature. Which is the point Willis and Dr. Spencer make in the top post.

I think I see what you are saying now. You are saying there is 1360 W/m^2 in, and the Earth intercepts 1/4 of that relative to what it is emanating, therefore, it cannot emanate more than 1360/4 = 340 (typo?) averaged over a given time interval.

By 240in is meant the (net of CERES measured albedo) solar irradiance measured by SORCE over several multi-annual periods. Your word “emanate” includes both surface scattered and surface emitted energy. At global surface equilibrium of 255K, the net 240in solar must balance with LW 240out, this is the point of the top post. Rounded, give or take maybe 2. In your ref. frame also, or any ref. frame as 1LOT is universal – the easiest being the one commonly used.

And currently there is not quite an equilibrium, as shown by UAH 6.0 T series. The net is currently slightly positive & is usually shown centered around maybe 0.4 or 0.5 W/m^2 set by Argo ocean energy content data but that’s a detail issue, not germane to top post discussion.

The thing you are missing is that this is a 2d measurement, but the input to the Earth is measured in 4d – over space and over time.

The input to the Earth is proportional to the cosine between surface elements and the Sun line of sight. That cosine overlaps. At the start of the day, it reaches back over 1/4 of the Earth, and at the end of the day, it stretches forward over another 1/4.

Perform the integral, and you find the average area illuminated over a day is 1/pi of the total, not 1/4.

See, that is the problem with rationalizations. Everything seems to fit together, but looks can be deceiving.

In my integral, the cos(theta) should have been squared to complete the projection, and that leads to a reduction by a factor of precisely pi/4 in the ratio. So, it seems I have egg on my face.

Ah, well, let it never be said that Bart will not admit it when he is wrong.

I still think there are avenues for the average temperature to be boosted by some amount without invoking GHE based upon smoothing via surface heat capacity – there is still this curious fact that the TOA spectrum seems to indicate 270K better than it does 255K. But, I have nothing more to add to the conversation at this time.

“the input to the Earth is measured in 4d – over space and over time.”

Yes, time being the multi-annual periods and space being the scenes viewed looking down by CERES radiometers as they step through that time. Their observed results net of albedo: 240in=240out.

So no-greenhouse effect surface (transparent atm.) is balanced at 255K in space-time (your 4d) NOT at 270K. You are using math & a different reference frame for 270K equilibrium violating 1LOT to argue against the instrumental observation of nature balanced at 255K (240in=240out).

Or show how your 270K radiating surface somehow balances with 240in. Won’t work without violation of 1LOT – similar mistake made by N&Z in their prose and the prose in the article linked by Dr. Spencer:

“The SB equation always results in a surface temperature that is too cold compared to surface temperatures when an atmosphere is present..the atmospheric pressure hypothesis of Zeller-Nikolov cannot explain surface temperatures above the Stefan-Boltzmann value without violation of the fundamental 1st Law of Thermodynamics: Conservation of Energy.”

Interestingly, in N&Z 2017 Fig. 4, their plot does not match theirs or the article’s prose, one has to watch the pea very closely with those guys.

“I still think there are avenues for the average temperature to be boosted by some amount without invoking GHE based upon smoothing via surface heat capacity”

This is the debate about illuminated object rotation speed imo.

I remain unconvinced rotation speed has any effect on planet/moon equilibrium temperature. If the surface heat capacity does not reach equilibrium during the spin then there is no equilibrium achieved.

The best counter debate I’ve seen is that removing the diurnal effects by measuring below the surface where diurnal effects (heat capacity related) are eliminated gets to the equilibrium temperature output balanced with energy input calculated/measured independent of rotation.

And also one has to be really clear about the distinction between measured thermometer temperature and measured brightness temperature.

At high spin rate, the temperature should be more or less uniform, and 255K should hold.

At zero relative rate, one half of the planet is at zero (or, the microwave background, which is negligible). The other half has a factor of 2 instead of 4 relative area, and so is elevated by the fourth root of 2, or about 20% higher, giving 303K. The average of the two is 1/2 of that, so 151.5K.

The transition should be smooth, so we should have an average temperature curve, versus spin rate, that starts at about 152K and asymptotically approaches 255K.

So, it seems my thought of increasing the temperature via spin rate is probably backwards, and unlikely to yield anything of value.

Makes sense, since if we divide the temperature into average and cyclical components, T = Tavg+Tcyc*cos(omega*t), we have AVG((Tavg+Tcyc*cos(omega*t))^4) = Tavg^4 + 3*Tavg^2*Tcyc^2 + 3/8*Tcyc^4, so a smaller Tavg is needed to get higher output.

That’s where you have to be careful to not avg. temperatures. For a non-spinning moon (ala JD ha) one side would always be illuminated by starlight and the surface IR emissivity would be different than the side illuminated by sunlight. But the moon does rotate (sorry, JD), even then the side facing starlight has a different IR emissivity than sun illuminated side. As far as I have been able to find, Diviner brightness data does not compensate.

This is like a rotating spacecraft, NASA measures the reflectivity in their big vaccum chamber not the emissivity. Then just subtracts the reflectivity from 1 to get emissivity for energy balance thermal control over the spin.

Yes, object measured emissivity is a function of illumination & particle size too. In these blog discussions the illumination is nearly always sunlight with terrestrial min. particle sizes assumed so that doesn’t get discussed. Not writing about changes caused by baking in sunlight.

Is it significant? If so, wouldn’t that change the 255K calculation, and make the temperature even more rotation-speed-dependent? It seems not, and you are just providing additional information (thanks).

If I have that wrong, are you about to start arguing the 255K is wrong?

The 255K brightness T outgoing is as observed from space so whatever the emissivity of the earth is in starlight, it is in there. You raise good points though and would be interesting to look into. As I recall, the difference IS significant for rotating non-smooth spacecraft and has to be measured which is why NASA went to the expense of their huge vacuum chamber. They probably have good computer codes for initial design though & the test is more confirmation and/or tweaking than discovery.

Bart, I was hoping you could work through your mistake to find the real problem. I even gave you a hint.

The problem is the 255K. It is the calculation of the equilibrium temperature of a homogeneous, isotropic, super-conducting, blackbody sphere. Although the calculation is correct, the result is meaningless.

I agree with you there but gravity emulates work in some way. It draws the atmospheric gases to the surface, stratifying them as it does.

If you consider a piston doing work in a constant volume, you have pdV. Gravity emulates that process by compressing the air based on altitude. In effect, it is producing the same effect a piston has on air in a constant volume.

You can write the 1st law as (delta U) = Q – pdV. Take that pdV term and try to substitute gravitational force. After all, pressure is force/unit area created by a gas on a container wall. How would you transfer that to gravitational force operating on atmospheric gases?

Think in reverse. In a container, a piston pushing down on a gas increases the pressure, and the temperature. In the atmosphere, gravity applies a downward force to all gas particles where the force has a gradient based on altitude.

I think it’s far more than coincidence that temperature varies with altitude and pressure.

Sigma and the 0.25 exponent apply as such at terrestrial temperatures because they were both developed experimentally in many room temperature labs. Proof? Point your inexpensive hand held IR thermometer at boiling water and ice water in your room temperature kitchen. Read out the known thermometer temperatures.

The problem with “climate science” is it lacks an adequate model.
Everyone knows this, and it has been proven without any doubt that any models used have been inadequate.

The reason we don’t have an adequate model, is it’s too hard to make one.
Or one can say there is not enough demand for a such difficult model to be created, and results in cheaper and fairly useless models. Or only useful for a limited or special interest.

What I think should done is to model earth as planet covered completely with ocean.
I think a planet completely covered by ocean would be slightly warmer, than planet 70% covered with an ocean.

Currently the average surface temperature of ocean of Earth is about 17 C and average surface air temperature of land is 10 C.
And it’s broadly known that the ocean warms Europe.
And I am unaware of land area warming the ocean, though I heard of an idea that islands can have a regional warming effect upon oceans, and I know that warmed beaches can warm the waters of incoming tide. And shallow water [and enclosed] waters can heated to higher temperatures.
And it seems that involving land masses one could increase global average temperature higher than as compared to world completely covered by ocean.
But it seems there is general agreement that our current arrangement of land masses is the main factor causing us to be in an Ice Age. Or compare to our present world, a world completely covered with water should be warmer.

On Earth the land mass are mostly in Northern Hemisphere and it is said the northern hemisphere is warmer than Southern Hemisphere.
Or southern hemisphere has higher percentage of ocean area and it has lower average temperature. And not only that but southern Hemisphere is pointed at the sun when Earth is closest to the Sun
[Perihelion]. This appears to disprove that more ocean area would cause higher average temperature.
Is it a paradox?

“one needs to take into account the fact the planet is rotating and spherical”

This is a important detail. No one knows what the temperature of this planet would be without an atmosphere, so let’s stop comparing apples to oranges. An airless planet’s surface will get hot to roughly the same temperature each day and cool off at night to another relatively constant low depending on latitude and season. If an atmosphere is added, the air will warm up even if it contains no IR absorbing gases. This will cool the surface during the day and warm it at night, relatively speaking. The average temperature will be greater than without an atmosphere.

Add IR absorbing gases and the daily highs will be cooler and lows will be even warmer compared to the inert atmosphere. This would cause the global average to be warmer again because extreme temperatures radiate more than more temperate ones.

Let’s stop with the greenhouse terminology and stop confusing people who don’t know the science. The atmosphere doesn’t stop convection and that’s what reduces the temperature extremes. There is no greenhouse. The “effect” needs to be called something closer to what it is, a complex system that minimizes temperature extremes.

Cross posting on this at WUWT.
Put the concept up that
Energy in = Energy heating up the radiative stuff + energy out.
You did state planets with an atmosphere appear to have higher surface temperatures than those without.
Yet you choose to only consider those with GHG as worthy of an explanation for this.
Why?
“Ive always had the nagging suspicion there was a simpler proof that the Zeller-Nikolov theory was wrong”
The theory basically states that there is a known correlation with the surface pressure of the gas and the temperature of the surface.
Nothing wrong with that bit of the premise per se. It is what we grew up being taught in physics and chemistry under various forms of the gas laws.

What is wrong and what you find wrong is that it appears to leave no room fir GHG effect. Which is obviously very wrong.
–
So how to marry the two concepts. One is to assert that NZ need to modify their observation to include the fact that different atmospheres will cause their calculations to be wrong without an offset for GHG.
Simple.
You may also have to adjust your view that only GHG have a back heating effect.
Conduction causes non GHG to heat up, just like IR causes CO2/H2O to heat up, just there are a lot more molecules of the non GHG available at the surface to pick up conducted heat.
True the surface gets hot first and loses most of its energy in reflected SW and emitted non absorbed IR.
A significant amount still heats the lowest layers that in turn warm the adjacent layers.
These warmer layers then,just like IR but slower, pass some conducted heat back to the earth surface.
Not detectable by hand held IR gadgets sadly.
–
The result, as you of all people must appreciate is that the effective emission surface is raised, just like for CO2 but not as far.
The actual earth surface temperature would be somewhat higher given an atmosphere is present.
This should be true for all non GHG atmospheres without reflective clouds Just like the GHG effect but a lot weaker it would reflect the energy given back to the ground by the warm surface air. The atmosphere raises the effective emission level which means that air or land below that level can be warmer than the land would be if it did not have an atmosphere [maybe].
This allows Willis to be right, You to be right NZ to be partially right and still have an atmosphere with a higher temperature than predicted and overcomes the IR argument,
In the sense that no extra IR energy is being emitted.
The energy needed to heat a gaseous atmosphere is after all less than minute in the scheme of things.
Cheers.

I agree that the Zeller-Nikolov theory is wrong but Willis Eschenbach’s refutation of it is also wrong because both discuss the mistaken idea that compressive heating alters the S-B temperature of a planet.

Such misunderstanding is common on all sides of this discussion. Decades ago Hans Jelbring tried to ‘cut through’ the misunderstandings but his attempt seems to have only encouraged people to entrench their views.

I explain as follows.

A planet with no atmosphere does NOT have a single surface temperature for the same reason that the Moon does not have a single surface temperature; i.e. it obtains solar heating on its day side but not its night side while all its surface radiates energy to space.

If the length of each day on the ‘no atmosphere planet’ equals one of its years then half its surface is solar heated and its other hemisphere is not. Both hemispheres radiate to space but the not-solar- heated region only obtains heat by conduction through the solid material of the planet. Also, the planet obtains most heat in its equatorial region and little heat at its poles. And provision of any difference between the length of its year and the length of its day provides varying solar heating to each region of the planet’s surface.

The S-B temperature of this planet is not a simple average of its surface temperatures. The S-B temperature is the effective temperature the planet would have if it were a grey body radiating an amount of energy equivalent to the solar energy the planet absorbs.

Any alteration to the system alters the greyness of the planet and, thus, the planet’s S-B temperature.

For example, change length of day of the ‘no atmosphere planet’ and its actual surface temperatures all change. But radiative output is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature. A reduction to e.g. its day surface temperature of say x produces a reduction of radiated output of say -y, but an increase to its night surface temperature of x provides an increase to its radiative output of LESS THAN +y (because the day surface has much higher temperature than the night surface and radiation is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature of the radiating surface). This alters radiative equilibrium (i.e. the planet absorbs more heat than it radiates) so the planet’s S-B temperature rises until radiative equilibrium is re-established.

Similarly, add a GHG-free atmosphere and solar heat absorbed by the planet’s hot regions is conducted to the atmosphere then transported to cooler regions by convection where it heats the cooler regions. This, too, alters the planet’s S-B temperature.

Then add GHG’s to the atmosphere and the magnitude of both surface heating and heat distribution is altered some more. This also alters the planet’s S-B temperature.

PLEASE NOTE THAT NONE OF THIS REQUIRES ANY COMPRESSIVE HEATING.

However, Jelbring noticed something interesting.
He observed that the S-B temperature of the Earth and the S-B of each other observable planet with an atmosphere (except Mars that has small and variable atmosphere) fits an equation which relates the temperature to only the planet’s distance from the Sun and the surface density of its atmosphere.

Jelbring considered this observation to be a remarkable coincidence. So, he published a paper in which proposed that all radiative, conductive and convective effects may adjust in a planetary atmosphere as though they were determined by gravity.

This suggestion could have been expected to be seminal but it was not. This is sad because investigation of possible ways such a coincidence could occur may have revealed much whether or not the Jelbring conjecture is true. But, instead of such investigations, some people claimed that compressive heating could not determine temperature while others claimed that it does, and they argued to defend those positions.

In terms of greenhouse effect theory the idea that Earth should be 33 C cooler is based a comparison to a ideal thermally conductive black body [which reflects the same as Earth].
The use of ideal thermally conductive body is to eliminate the complexities of rotation and the amount of energy absorbed, or ideal thermal conductive blackbody is considered to absorb all sunlight in the disk area of the sphere of planet. Or absorb all sunlight which could intercept the planetary surface and radiate this energy uniformly over entire surface of the sphere.

Or an ideal thermally conductive blackbody at Earth distance is 1360 watts [area of disk] divided by 4 = 340 watts radiated from each square meter of blackbody in a vacuum and blackbody radiating 340 watts has temperature of 278 K or about 5 C.
But as said Greenhouse effect takes the other step of having blackbody reflect 30% of the sunlight:
1360 times .7 equals 952. 952 divided by 4 = 238 watts.
And blackbody in vacuum radiating 238 watts has temperature of 254 K or -19 C

A blackbody that reflects is nonsense and Earth doesn’t have uniform temperature, but it’s good enough for pseudo science.

Something to note, if a planet uniformly received 238 watts of sunlight, and planet would have average temperature of about -19 C, but greenhouse gases could not increase this temperature.
Nor could an actual greenhouse or parked car with windows rolled up increase the temperature.

roughly, what greenhouse gases do is cause more sunlight to be absorbed, if allow the idea of delaying energy from leaving system [insulation] as “re-absorbing” the same energy from the sun. Or if like, “recycling that energy”.

But say 400 watts of sunlight is not just energy which can be absorbed, rather it’s an intensity of energy which is the same as the temperature of sunlight at the surface of the sun which diminished in watts per square meter by distance.
Or 400 watts of sunlight can magnified so as to reach the same temperature as the surface of the sun [and no further].

A lightbulb with filament temperature of 3000 K can also be magnified to to 3000 K in area the same size as filament [and not higher temperature than the filament.

If the light of lightbulb or sunlight has it’s energy diffused, no one know how to put it back together again. Or I am talking about direct sunlight- though perhaps, as wild guess lasers can do this in a sense].

Sorry Richard, but I don’t think you “explained”. Here’s what you mentioned:

“Then add GHG-s to the atmosphere and the magnitude of both surface heating and heat distribution are altered some more. This also alters the planet’s S-B temperature.

I respond,

Prior to the extract from my post I explained how changing temperatures distribution over a planets surface alters the planets S-B temperature.

Adding GHGs to the planets atmosphere must alter heat distribution (so temperature distribution) because GHG molecules absorb IR that non-GHG molecules dont. This must affect the S-B temperature but it can be debated as to how much.

So, I did explain the matter, and I hope having this clarification enables you to see I did when you again read my original post,

“Similarly, add a GHG-free atmosphere and solar heat absorbed by the planet’s hot regions is conducted to the atmosphere…”

*
Conducted? By which medium?

Most air constituents (N2, O2, Ar, WV, CO2, …) have a thermal conductivity of no more than 25 mW / m K at 15 C, compared with water (600) and metal (over 1000); and even at 1000 C it is still around 80.

That is the reason why it works as an excellent insulator.

Thus it fails as an explanation for how convection processes can arise.

Evapotranspiration leading to a latent heat flux one could better understand as a major factor.

“He observed that the S-B temperature of the Earth and the S-B of each other observable planet with an atmosphere (except Mars that has small and variable atmosphere) fits an equation which relates the temperature to only the planet’s distance from the Sun and the surface density of its atmosphere.”

P = rho*Rspec*T. Temperature and pressure given density are like mass and energy through E = mc^2 – they are equivalent. So, in that sense, this appears to me to just be saying that you can predict the temperature from the temperature.

Since you write the S-B temperature (by that I guess is meant the near surface atm. GHCN thermometer temperature field mean) can be predicted from these two pieces of information please show you can actually predict Earth’s current mean T of about 289K using only this (a) (b) data to back up your statement.

The fact you are ignoring is that the S-B temperature of a planet has a range of possible temperatures for a single average surface temperature of the planet.

As I explained above,
(a) a planet’s average surface temperature is the average temperature of all points on the planet’s surface,
but
(b) the planet’s S-B temperature is the effective temperature the planet would have if it were a grey body radiating an amount of energy equivalent to the solar energy the planet absorbs.

Importantly, and as I also explained,
the distribution of surface temperatures can vary without the average surface temperature changing (e.g. night side warms by 10 K while day side cools by 10 K)
but
that causes radiative imbalance
and, therefore,
the S-B temperature alters to re-establish radiative balance.

Obtaining the S-B temperature from surface temperatures requires
1. calculating the 4th root of the absorbed solar flux at every point on the planet,
and
2. doing the same for the outgoing flux at ‘top of atmosphere’ from each of the points
and
3. subtract each point flux obtained at 1 from the data obtained at 2,
then
4. calculate the temperature field of each point result
and
5. then average the resulting temperature field across the entire globe to obtain the S-B temperature.

“Importantly, and as I also explained, the distribution of surface temperatures can vary without the average surface temperature changing (e.g. night side warms by 10 K while day side cools by 10 K) but that causes radiative imbalance and, therefore, the S-B temperature alters to re-establish radiative balance.”

Richard, night side warms by 10 K while day side cools by 10 K weather does not cause radiative climate imbalance as viewed from space since the 255K brightness temperature would be unchanged as there would still be balance at 240in=240out in your example. If the entire surface declines by 10K over 4-12+ annuals THEN you get a change in climate 240out and the planet brightness temperature with a possible imbalance if 240in remained the same in the period.

“1.calculating the 4th root of the absorbed solar flux at every point on the planet”

does not make sense, the GHCN thermometer field temperature is measured thus known. If you wanted to compute the surface outgoing flux then you could do so from each T measurement and determine the mean of that flux field (the 396). The ASR is not just absorbed at the planet surface

“The source is a half-wave rectified sinusoid, for which the average value is the peak S divided by pi (this is assuming the Sun is above the equator, so that is a bit of a kluge, too, but its a better kluge, because it does at least hold at specific times of the year).

Thus, for a given incremental area dA, we have

S*(1-a)/pi * dA = sigma*T^4 * dA

from which, we get

T = (S*(1-a)/(pi*sigma))^0.25”

*
Why do you present this revolutionary idea here as Anonymous, instead of informing the world-wide scientific community (of course using some open review mechanism, as peer-reviewers very probably couldn’t accept it) ?

I have an actual job, and this stuff is so elementary, it would be a major step down for me. Now, do you have an actual comment or query of substance, or do I read correctly that you are just interested in flinging poo?

No, I simply adhere to rigor, which seems a slippery concept to others. The math I have presented is elementary, and rigorous. Not to toot my own horn, but I am rather good at math.

“This stuff is absolutely not elementary because you think completely different than the vast majority of scientists.”

Well, thank you. That would put me in with some awfully good company.

Nobody is going to review anything while the current paradigm is regnant. It will take a crisis, when the failure of that paradigm becomes manifest. When that time comes, I have armed you here with concepts you can use to make your own mark. You’re welcome.

–Stephen P Anderson says:
January 2, 2019 at 7:52 AM
You presume they want an adequate model. This current model is perfect for their leftist agenda.–

That what I meant by:
–Or one can say there is not enough demand for a such difficult model to be created, and results in cheaper and fairly useless models. Or only useful for a limited or special interest.–

Lefties could be said to be amateur politicians, with idea that politicians are near 100% amateurs. Or Lefties are more crazy, most politicans, but politician tend to be power craving idiots, but may decide to be less vocal about their madness.

Limited or special interest are lefties, politicians. bureaucrats, lobbyist, and etc. Or robbers and liars.

Bart…”The 0.25 exponent can be analytically derived by integration of the Planck distribution. It’s not merely empirical. Sorry, Gordon”.

Bart…the Planck distribution represents the radiation from a blackbody at a GIVEN TEMPERATURE. The original Stefan derivation of radiation pressure versus temperature could be described as a BB since the temperatures range from about 700C to 1500C.

You have to understand that the work of Boltzmann and Planck was based on theoretical blackbodies. I have never encountered evidence that the relationships expressed in either apply ‘exactly’ in real world situations. In the article that follows, the authors have claimed as much.

The T^4 relationship applies in the approx. 700 C – 1500C range, not at every temperature. In some cases, T^4 becomes T^5. I am following with a link describing the history of the T^4 derivation in which it is suggested T^4 does not apply in all cases.

Here’s what Gerlich and Tscheuschner have to say about that. Gerlich was a math professor who taught thermodynamics and I am sure the math appearing in the following came from him.

Beginning on page 58 0f 115, there is an excellent mathematical discussion of radiation and its limitations with reference to S-B. On the pages before 58, there is a discussion of Arrhenius, Tyndall, Fourier, etc.

I have taken the liberty in the following of correcting issues with translation from the PDF format to the posted HTML format.

“If only thermal radiation was possible for the heat transfer of a radiation-exposed body one would use Stefan-Boltzmann’s law

S(T) = sigma.T4 (70)

to calculate the ground temperature determined by this balance. The irradiance S has dimensions of a power density and sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant given by

sigma = (2pi^5.k^4)/(15c^2.h^2) = 5.670400.10^-8 W/m^2K^4 (71)

For example, the energy flux density of a black body at room temperature 300K is approximately

S(T =300K) = 459 W/m2 (72)

One word of caution is needed here: As already emphasized in Section 2.1.5 the constant sigma appearing in the T4 law is not a universal constant of physics. Furthermore, a gray radiator must be described by a temperature dependent sigma spoiling the T4 law. Rigorously speaking, for real objects Equation (70) is invalid. Therefore all crude approximations relying on T4 expressions need to be taken with great care. In fact, though popular in global climatology, they prove nothing”.

With regard to Section 2.1.5 mentioned above it is on page 20 of 115. It is the conclusion of the previous pages back to 16 of 115 which are worth the read. In those pages they cover the conversion of Planck to Boltzmann:

“2.1.5 Conclusion

Three facts should be emphasized here:

– In classical radiation theory radiation is not described by a vector field assigning to every space point a corresponding vector. Rather, with each point of space many rays are associated (Figure 3). This is in sharp contrast to the modern description of the radiation field as an electromagnetic field with the Poynting vector field as the relevant quantity [99].

– The constant sigma appearing in the T4 law is not a universal constant of physics. It strongly depends on the particular geometry of the problem considered.

– The T4-law will no longer hold if one integrates only over a filtered spectrum, appropriate to real world situations”.

It is mentioned in the article that Wein’s Law does not apply at higher temperatures and frequencies.

Also, note that Planck’s formula has an exponential component in it with wavelength and temperature in the exponent. It seems that was included to overcome the issues related to the ultraviolet catastrophe.

In other words, Planck’s formula is a statistical manipulation, which he admitted, to account for the probability that higher energy intensities will not be found at the same intensity as those in mid-spectrum.

At the time, he had no way of proving that experimentally. Since his work is based on the work of Boltzmann, it’s hardly surprising that the Boltzmann constant can be derived from Planck.

I am interested in how both can be applied at terrestrial temperatures and I don’t think they can. The error between the S-B calculation and Earth’s actual temperature, attributed to the GHE, is likely due to an error in S-B, either in the sigma component or in the T^4 presumption.

On the one hand, thank you for the links. However, I do not think we are dealing with any exotic departure here. The TOA radiation spectrum matches expectations. I do not believe pursuing your line of inquiry will bear any fruit.

Surface temperatures are established by radiative and convective equilibrium, not radiation alone.

I do not know if it’s an equilibrium. What is certain is that the calculation of the respective roles is typically a problem of thermodynamics.

Surface – atmosphere heat fluxes are approximately 80% convective. Little problem, we do not know how to calculate convection. The theory gets out of this bad step by evacuating thermodynamics. The famous convective radiative equilibrium is really nothing more than a trick to get rid of an out-of-reach thermodynamic calculation.

The concept of radiative forcing is only a byproduct of this trick. That’s why I’m interested in any publication that would links this concept to thermodynamics.

There is no need to do so, convection only cycles energy within the system so cannot change the total system thermodyanmic internal energy as no convective energy crosses the system boundaries. Only radiation makes it to space, this is what is meant by radiative equilibrium of the total system.

Convection is observed to cycle the same amount of energy up and down, this is what is meant by what goes up comes down for no net change of GHCN mean surface thermometer air temperature by system internal convective processes.

MW et. al. papers of the 1960s established the framework of radiative-convective equilibrium in the troposhere but phi always seems to have trouble understanding them.

As I wrote, phi demonstrates does not fully understand radiative-convective equilibrium. This can be easily corrected when phi studies & achieves & comments using an understanding of the work of MW in the 1960s and many subsequent authors building on that framework. A modern beginning course textbook on meteorology would also be helpful.

NB: there is no need to invoke the term “heat”, phi, when you really mean enthalpy of the atm. gases & you can learn that starting with MW framework of radiative-convective equilibrium.

When commenting with a non-existent entity like “heat” you may arrive at any conclusion you wish (like any other commenter) as there is no test that can prove you wrong. You cannot prove yourself experimentally correct either.

Frequently in meteorology, a use for the thermodynamic term enthalpy is encountered, is well defined, experimentally proven and any comments using enthalpy can then be verified for correctness.

The latent energy from condensing water vapor is well covered in the MW series of foundational papers on radiative-convective equilibrium in the 1960s & in modern meteorology texts so I have nothing to add. Read them, understand them, use them in your comments if you want to make a verifiably correct point about meteorology and/or the top post point.

“have you a link to a paper that integrates the concept of radiative forcing to thermodynamics?”

Again, I would recommend you study ALL the MW papers which integrate the concept of radiative forcing to thermodynamics. If you need some special help, see a librarian as they live for the opportunity, or just enter this string into google: radiative-convective equilibrium

If you want to find the papers by Manabe et. al.: radiative-convective equilibrium manabe

Knock yourself out trying to show experimentally or observationally where they go wrong, in your opinion, as they integrate the concept of radiative forcing to thermodynamics.

If interested in a recent earth system energy budget balance using the water cycle (they don’t call it a cycle for nothing) including sensible convection and latent energy, I would suggest L’Ecuyer 2015.

See their Fig. 4 which adds the water cycle as observed so balances precipitation from condensation energy returned to surface (down) balanced with evaporation and convection (up) for no net energy contribution to surface temperature as I wrote:

It is not because you do not understand this notion that it is not valid. It is not because you do not like the term that it has not been used for decades in thermodynamics. It is not because you pretend to do without it that it would not be irreplaceable and everywhere present in textbook.

The latent energy from condensing water vapor is well covered in the MW…
MW ? MW pour Modeled Wrong ? Sort of How to Do what is Not to Do ?

Water cycle: you vaguely give the impression of confusing mass and energy.
Or, do you think that convection works in a closed circuit with a radiative descending branch?
As here : http://oi61.tinypic.com/e6u2pk.jpg ?
In this case, I can’t do anything for you.

Radiative forcing : this concept is omnipresent in the climate literature, yes. I do not see any of your links that link it to thermodynamics. And for a good reason: this concept of radiative forcing frontally contradicts the second principle.

“There is no need to do so, convection only cycles energy within the system so cannot change the total system thermodyanmic internal energy as no convective energy crosses the system boundaries.”

The GHE theory holds that heat radiating from the surface is impeded by IR absorbing gases in the atmosphere. If, however, heat can be convected above the filter of the atmosphere, it is then free to radiate, and indeed, is then impeded from coming back to the surface.

Moreover, the simple schematic of radiation being intercepted by IR gasses and then re-radiating in random directions, with half going back down, is not adequately descriptive. Excited IR molecules pass most of the energy away via thermalization with other atmospheric constituents. Those atmospheric constituents, in turn, thermalize the IR active molecules, which can then dissipate the energy to space.

So, there are both heating and cooling potentials here. Which one dominates will be determined by the rate of thermalization, which will depend upon convection.

An analogy would be a car engine. Placing an obstruction in front of the engine will impede cooling of the engine. But, pipe fluid from the engine into that obstruction, and provide significant radiating surface, and you have bypassed the normal heat path, and provided a way of regulating the temperature of the engine.

phi, MW is Manabe-Wetherald which we’ve discussed many times. You don’t recognize or understand because you haven’t read and/or understood the foundational literature where they integrate the concept of radiative forcing to thermodynamics. If as you write, heat exists, distill some so I can see what color heat is or if heat is clear & I’d like to measure the density of heat.

Use the google strings.

—–

Bart, mass radiates, there is no such thing as heat radiating.

Not sure what you mean “dominates”. For radiative-convective equilibrium, the sensible energy & latent energy stay within the system boundary as shown in all energy budgets so they don’t change surface temperatures only radiation gets to space across the boundary to do so. Currently there is an imbalance in that radiative transfer in/out that can change surface temperatures. There is no imbalance observed in the water cycle within observational limits over long annual periods (4-12+ years).

Obviously. But, there are layers to the atmosphere, and some threshold altitude below which radiating elements are more likely to pass their emissions to the ground, and above which are more likely to pass their emissions to space.

If you can transfer heat to that upper level, you will cool, rather than heat, the surface.

This is my belief, FWIW. I know that the AGW argument is flawed, because I know that CO2 increases with the integral of temperature anomaly, at least in the near to medium term (has been since at least 1958 when MLO came on line). As a result, any significant sensitivity of temperature anomaly to increasing CO2 would produce a positive feedback loop that could not be stabilized even with T^4 radiation.

I base that upon examination of the representative perturbation equations for temperature anomaly and CO2

dTa/dt = -a*Ta + b*CO2
d_CO2/dt = k*Ta

For positive k, this equation is unstable if b is greater than zero, regardless of a. In the real world, there are other feedbacks, which might allow some modest sensitivity, e.g., if we have

d_CO2/dt = k*Ta – e*CO2

for some small positive e which hasn’t been uniquely observable since 1958, but might manifest over a longer time span in the future. In this case, we can have b slightly positive and still remain stable.

Understand, these perturbation coefficients, a, b, k, and e, are state dependent, based upon linearization about a given operating condition. They depend upon the absolute temperature, the convective state, humidity, etc..

Thus, it is possible that the sensitivity of temperature to GHE, represented by parameter b in the above, would be positive in, say, the initial state before convection sets in, then would gradually decrease to a minimal, or even zero or negative value, as convection kicks in.

That interpretation preserves the validity of the GHE, but simply suggests a point of diminishing returns at which the temperature anomaly becomes largely insensitive to increasing concentration. And, this is consistent with what we observe in nature generally: a dissipative system typically evolves such that it reaches a maximum entropy state, from which it is resistant to being dislodged.

“If you can radiatively transfer energy to that upper level, you will cool, rather than warm, the surface.”

Yes, that’s about where any known atm. thins out in the IR around 0.1-0.2bar.

Pardon my n’enculons pas des mouches. You can always try to win a debate invoking a non-existent entity, won’t work with me, too many make mistakes using the heat term, treat heat as in reality, heat doesn’t exist & you can’t go wrong.

The water cycle is balanced in radiative transfer to/from the surface, no effect on surface temperatures as observed.

“The water cycle is balanced in radiative transfer to/from the surface, no effect on surface temperatures as observed.”

Everything is balanced in an equilibrium state. It does not say anything about how the equilibrium state came to be.

E.g., a pendulum hanging straight down has gravitational force balanced by the force holding it up at the pivot, and net torque is zero. That does not mean you can freely swing the pendulum around without any torque resisting you.

ball4…”You can always try to win a debate invoking a non-existent entity, wont work with me, too many make mistakes using the heat term, treat heat as in reality, heat doesnt exist & you cant go wrong”.

That does not mean heat does not exist, it means you are a blithering idiot.

And in Gordon’s world too, thermal being the short form of thermodynamic internal.

“heat is a measure of the transfer of heat.”

Heat doesnt exist in an object in modern thermodynamics so heat can’t transfer. Taking out Gordon’s double negative, Gordon insists:

That does mean heat does exist.

Back in the mid-1800s a block of steel was increased in temperature and precision measurements showed no weight increase on earth. Heat was obviously added but the test showed convincingly either heat isn’t affected by gravity or heat has no mass. If Gordon’s heat entity isn’t affected by gravity or has no mass then heat has zero density.

If heat were a gas, Gordon’s beloved P=density*R*T eqn. shows gaseous heat has zero pressure at any temperature. Thus, heat doesn’t have the properties of a gas (or plasma) either.

Gordon always maintains EM radiation is not heat so Gordon rules out heat being radiation. Gordon nor anyone else has ever seen heat distilled in a test tube so Gordon cannot tell us heat’s color, texture, odor, or if heat is liquid or solid at room temperature.

Apparently, heat exists as anything Gordon wants heat to be and thus Gordon can win any debate using his magic definition of the heat term because there is no test that can prove Gordon wrong since Gordon’s definition will always be right whatever it is.

Must be nice to win the heat debates all the time, just get Gordon to invoke Gordon’s definition of heat or do so yourself. Bingo! A non-falsifiable winner.

phi sez: “radiative-convective equilibrium is just a trick, not a concept.”

Anyone writing that the foundational papers of radiative-equilibrium in the atm. are just a trick does not understand the papers. This would be anyone having not passed the pre-req.s to enter into their study. Radiative-convective equilibrium are not a concept because the term is experimentally and observationally proven.

For example, heat is only a concept and can often be used as a trick, you have to watch nature’s real pea very carefully when the term is invoked.

Bart 2:41pm, I’ll try to figure out what you are writing in spare time. It appears you are arguing against the well-known & tested optical depth eqn.s for grey absorbers with various mixing ratios in a planetery atm. at total surface pressure but it is hard to tell at first read after “I know that the AGW argument is flawed”.

If you want me to follow with less time involved, rewrite that showing where the optical depth eqn.s are flawed & I can then follow using less time.

Tim If that were wholly true, then the energy released by condensation would never shine back down on the surface in equal amount of energy removed by evaporation and convection. You need to include words for that balancing cycle. Look at Fig. 4 for the total cycle to see what is meant by my words you clipped.

1)Your Ta seems to be GHCN global mean absolute surface thermometer temperature (the 289K).
2)Any dTa/dt due to added CO2 ppm must conserve energy in the system because no energy has been added or subtracted in your representative perturbation by CO2 ppm in the total control volume thus the lapse rate rotation (p=surface to p=0) about a point maybe in the mid to upper troposphere has to be constrained for constant enthalpy – something like cp/g * integral from 0 to Psurface of T(p)*dp must be held constant you do not appear to have a term or discuss such obvious constraint. See Fig. 4 Manabe-Wetherald 1964 & discussion. It is possible this is what you mean by the term (-a*Ta).
3) Along that line of thinking, how do you constrain or allow the entire stratospheric Ts say to adjust to your representative perturbation at the surface Ta since Ts should cool a bit during your representative perturbation, cf. Myhre 1998 intro second para.

Unless those issues are clarified, I won’t even need to start to look into how optical depth eqn.s compare to your representative perturbation.

Anyone writing that the foundational papers of radiative-equilibrium in the atm. are just a trick does not understand the papers.

Radiative-convective equilibrium !

Ramanathan and Coakley 1978, Convective adjustment :

An exact treatment for qc [convective heat flux] would require the solution of the equations of motion and continuity in addition to the solution of the energy equation. This ambitious task has not been attempted by any of the radiative-convective models. In general, qc is accounted for by semiempirical or empirical techniques.

The empirical technique considerably simplifies the procedure for solving the thermal structure of the atmosphere. Since the temperature gradient is prescribed within the troposphere, (8) [qT(z) + qS(z) + qC(z) = const = 0] need not be solved. Instead, the equation for the radiative equilibrium condition, i.e., qT + qS = 0, is solved with the provisio that the lapse rate at any level within the atmosphere should be less than or equal to the critical lapse rate.

the term is experimentally and observationally proven.

A term is not proven but if you think of the trick, obviously no. Or give specific references.

Ball4,You need to include words for that balancing cycle.
You just show all the confusion that lives in you.
What escapes from the planet is heat, your IR arrows are not heat but irradiance.
You do not have to balance irradiance with heat flux.
What a bad cooking!

Ramanathan and Coakley mean the convective energy flux from p=1bar to p=0 & they are right the flux(p) could be calculated but “(t)his ambitious task has not been attempted” because it is not necessary as there are observations of nature’s convective energy flux in the water cycle over 4-12+ annual periods.

Specific reference Fig. 4 flux mean being 81 up (E) as shown and 81 down (P) for no net change in surface energy flux thus no net change in surface temperature due to convection/evaporation and precipitation over the period observed because these processes are all internal to the control volume of interest.

At 3:41am, phi again attempts to trick us invoking the heat term, won’t work phi. It is well known heat does not exist in an object (such as the earth-atm. system) except of course by tricksters it seems. What a bad cooking!

It is not calculated because it is not calculable. The effect on temperature of a change in GHG concentration is of course not observed. There are GCMs but their inability to predict temperatures is obvious.

On the contrary, what is observed is that the thermal gradient is eminently dependent on radiative transfers: night / day, summer – winter, inversions in high pressures, etc.

Fig. 4 flux mean being 81 up (E) as shown and 81 down (P)

You did not understand Fig 4. P is the latent heat deposited in the troposphere. it does not go back down to earth.

You have for the atmospheric zone:
From the surface 399 + 81 + 25 = 505
From the sun 74
Total in 579
Balcanced by
To the surface 341
To space 238
Total out 579

Yet weather predictions of convection for tomorrow or even this afternoon (wind & direction) will turn out to be right or people would pay them no attention. So calculable, predictable. GCMs do this well out 5 days, somewhat ok for 10-15 days and not yet well enough past that time frame.

“The effect on temperature of a change in GHG concentration is of course not observed.”

The effect on temperature of a change in GHG concentration has been well observed, there are many papers on the subject, take my advice: see a librarian. Find the papers. Acquire the pre-req.s & understand them. Some work and study will be involved, not going to happen overnight.

“You did not understand Fig 4. P is the latent heat deposited in the troposphere. it does not go back down to earth.”

The trickster invokes the term heat again. The latent energy from condensation is all dumped IN and taken OUT of the atm. as the water cycle operates. No net change in surface temperature from the water cycle 81 up and 81 down. No net change in 25 convective up either as the 25 down and 81 down arrows are included in the 341 down arrow. If phi bothered to read the text, then phi would know this before I had to point it out to phi. phi should go ahead & read the text where the balance of 235 is also explained.

To the surface 341 = 81 + 25 + 235

There is E=81 up arrow & P=81 W / m2 down arrow coming back to the surface !!!…down arrow included as component of the big 341 total arrow dumped out of the atm. to surface.

That said, all this paper (L’Ecuyer et al) is observed physics and phi simply has not read and understood the paper & even after phi asked for a specific ref.

It would be the anomaly. The “a” term would nominally be 4*sigma*T0^3*A/C, being the partial derivative of the SB term with respect to absolute temperature evaluated at the equilibrium value, multiplied by area and divided by heat capacity in J/K, giving overall units of sec^-1. It is the negative sensitivity in the rate of change of temperature anomaly to the current temperature anomaly.

Conservation laws do not strictly need to be obeyed in perturbation equations, though they should be derived from equations that do obey them such that the conservaton law is satisfied to first order. Satisfaction of the first order constraint would be implicit in the coefficients of the expansion. See here.

Bart, ok equilibrium absolute T(z) To=Ta+Tmean at each z up to p=0. Your DTa/dt = D(Tsurface-Tmean)/dt in each dz. That complicates things hugely in the calculus but Tmean is a constant over the 30 years and simplifies things eventually in that period only, longer term Tmean is not constant and some simplification disappears.

I am familiar with small perturbation theory and the math but not tuned up on it & I don’t think I need to tune up to discuss this stuff or at least not interested enough.

I agree small perturbations create a disequilibrium that, if stable, returns to an equilibrium with conserved quantities conserved. I would argue that even in the perturbed state conserved quantities must be conserved to be natural and to prove your stuff you will still need to show atm. enthalpy is controlled for a constant in your control volume & is held constant for delta CO2 ppm.

This should be really tough as thermodynamics is only well defined in equilibrium states. But somehow jet engines get thermo. designed well enough to operate.

You have a math challenge ahead to show constant atm. enthalpy in the control volume of interest is controlled for in your work. My guess is controlling for just that fact will not remove all possibility of you establishing an unassailable “AGW argument is flawed” but that fact will eliminate “temperature anomaly to increasing CO2 would produce a positive feedback loop that could not be stabilized even with T^4 radiation.” Same as Cochrane won against the opposition, your doubters will argue: “If the glove don’t fit, you can’t convict.”

I’m not sure I should belabor this anymore, as there is a lot to cover, and this is a very limited venue in which to cover it. Suffice to say, I am convinced of my analysis, top level as it is. The reason it leads necessarily to instability is fundamentally due to my premise that the rate of change of CO2 concentration is proportional to temperature anomaly, which indicates that our inputs have little impact on overall concentration.

This was Murry Salby’s thesis, for which heresy he was crucified. But he was right, IMO, and I cannot be persuaded otherwise. This match is not happenstance, as is demonstrated by the fact that concentration is not tracking emissions here in the “pause” era.

You may disagree, for whatever reasons you find congenial, but it is probably futile to argue it with me. Lord knows, I have been in enough arguments about it in many venues, but nobody has ever come close to making a compelling argument as to why I should disbelieve what my eyes can plainly see.

phi…”Surface – atmosphere heat fluxes are approximately 80% convective. Little problem, we do not know how to calculate convection”.

Convection cannot be calculated by treating heat as a flux. Convection involves the transport of heat by a mass, real atoms. A flux has no mass.

With the availability of smaller, more affordable computers in the 1960-1970 era, people became interested in modeling the atmosphere. To program such a model, certain assumptions had to be made. Furthermore, a mathematical model had to be created using different equations that were readily available, like the Navier-Stokes equations.

Unfortunately, most equations of the types required dealt with flows, like fluxes, therefore radiation became the focus of heat transport in the atmosphere.

You referred later in your post to forcings. That is a product of differential equation theory. A forcing function is an equation applied to another function to force a response to certain input conditions. For example, a square wave, or unit impulse function is applied to an amplifier equation (function) to get a step response. That reveals undesirable oscillation.

I am afraid that jargon, and that’s all it is, has found its way into mainstream physics. People are talking about forcings, which are imaginary components of a model, to reality.

They are also treating EM as heat when there is no way to convert EM to heat using S-B. They have gone so far as to include positive feedback in models based on the mistaken notion that EM, as IR, from a cooler atmosphere, can be absorbed by the surface so as it make it hotter than what it is warmed by solar energy.

That not only contradicts the 2nd law, it is a recycling of heat representing perpetual motion.

Models cannot deal with convection because that would require complex fluid dynamics equations in a chaotic environment. They cannot even apply radiation equations although they do.

Climate modelling is garbage science as it stands. The fact that the IPCC and governments are accepting projections based on climate models is proof that both are run by idiots.

In the cliamte pseudoscience, the notion of forcing has a special meaning. It emerges from a strange hypothesis which distributes the roles between convection which would fix alone the thermal gradient and radiative phenomena which alone would assure the thermal fluxes; it’s the famous radiative-convective equilibrium. From this strange hypothesis follows that any radiative imbalance is recovered in first order by a simple translation of the thermal profile. Whether the imbalance comes from an increase in incoming energy or a decrease in outgoing energy, the result is the same. This hypothesis is therefore incoherent with thermodynamics since it does not differentiate the effect of the imbalances as a function of the temperatures of the source. It is irrelevant whether thermal fluxes involved go from hot to cold or from cold to hot. This is also why backradiations are represented as heat flux.

I think I found the source of your lunacy. It is this crackpot character who, rather than believe he could be wrong, insists all science is corrupt and only he has the truth. A true and complete nut job that you probably get 90% of your lunatic ideas from.

This goofball Gary Novak by name, says all science is corrupt since Newton but I don’t see even one valid experiment from this loon.

He studied microbiology and now he knows all science and is an expert at all fields. He knows so much that he insists all science (including those who actually do valid experiments and publish their results) are corrupt.

This is your reply to two experts in thermodynamics who are trying to straighten out lunatics like you who insists heat can be transferred both ways between bodies of different temperatures.

G&T point out the obvious, that EM is not heat and only heat quantities can be summed as a net energy and that the 2nd law applies only to heat. They also claim that a temperature cannot be derived mathematically from EM radiation.

I have tried to point that out. EM has essentially no substance, in particular, no mass. It cannot interact with heat which is the kinetic energy of atoms, which have mass. In essence, you cannot sum EM with heat. All you can do is convert one of them to the other.

EM can only interact with electrons in mass and there are stringent rules. One of them is that the frequency of the EM must match the frequency of the electron.

To me, having decades of experience in electronics with resonance, that is a no-brainer. Resonant systems can only absorb EM when the EM frequency matches the resonant frequency. The EM from a cooler source lacks the frequency to be absorbed by a hotter electron.

In electronic communication, the antennas and wave guides are tuned to a particular EM frequency. So are the receiving circuits. That means the EM is tuned to the frequency of the electron current reversals.

It’s no different in the atom. You simply cannot expect electrons in atoms to absorb EM with frequencies outside of the electron’s frequency.

With lower frequency EM there is a broader resonance band over which frequencies can be absorbed. That’s not the case in the atom, where the absorbed EM must have a very specific frequency that matches a quantum energy level difference.

If the level difference is 5 eV that means the frequency x h must equal 5 eV exactly. Otherwise, the electron will not transition.

Please kindly shut up about racehorses and Moon rotation until you find me astronomers or NASA energineers who work on space flight who agrees with your view point. Until then you can proclaim us all wrong. And that is your opinion, not verified by any supporting evidence. Just a mindless opinion. You have lots of them and I really do not care at all about your opinions. When you bring some facts and evidence to the table, than maybe someone will listen to your endless opinions. Get some facts Man!

But, I didn’t mention the Moon. I mentioned the fact that you believe a racehorse is rotating on its own axis. That’s just one example of how corrupted you are. You will say anything to allow the continued perversion of science.

Norman, my link is to a paper published by two astronomers in 1993, in an astronomy journal. It is clearly not written by Tesla, though it is about his papers, for a large part. On page 125, second paragraph, you will see a quote from a paper written by two other astronomers, Savic & Kasanin, mentioning that the moon does not rotate on its axis. I linked to the paper solely for the reason that you asked for evidence of astronomers sharing JD Huffman’s view. You now have that.

I have seen plenty of videos like the one you link to. They prove nothing.

I looked at the linked comment and it looks like you are not a rational or logical poster. Nate showed how the tool verified established physics but you went to to mindless diversion mode. Very similar to JDHuffman who has no math skills, no logic, no reason and loves to make up unsupported opinions. When asked for evidence he diverts, taunts, uses terms like “rambling” or something or other about typing skills. You are not much brighter than that one.

I like the skeptics that can reason, use logic understand basic concepts. You are not one of those. You jump in with your redundant “Please stop trolling” comments.

I have not yet seen any evidence you have any knowledge of even basic science or math. But you also need to post empty meaningless comments. Too bad.

Sorry Richard, but I don’t think you “explained”. Here’s what you mentioned:

“Then add GHG’s to the atmosphere and the magnitude of both surface heating and heat distribution is altered some more. This also alters the planet’s S-B temperature.” ”

I respond,

Prior to the extract from my post I explained how changing temperatures distribution over a planet’s surface alters the planet’s S-B temperature. Adding GHGs to the planet’s atmosphere must alter heat distribution (so temperature distribution) because GHG molecules absorb IR that non-GHG molecules don’t. This must affect the S-B temperature but it can be debated as to how much.

So, I did explain the matter, and I hope having this clarification enables you to see I did when you again read my original post,

‘must’ is not relevant in science. Maybe in consensus, but not in science.

CO2 makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere and if you apply the Ideal Gas Equation, even broadly, it tells you immediately that a gas in a mix of gases with a 0.04% mass percent will not contribute anymore than a few hundreds of a degree C in heat.

The Dalton Law portion of the IGL tells us that total pressure of a mixed gas is the sum of the pressure of the individual gases. If you apply that to CO2 in the atmosphere, as it absorbs and emits surface IR, it’s plain to see that the contribution of heat by CO2 is along the lines of its mass percent (approximate partial pressure).

Climate alarmists, like Gavin Schmidt of GISS have arbitrarily assigned a warming effect of CO2 between 9% and 25%. They obviously pulled those values out of a hat.

richard…”“must” is an appropriate word used in science when it is used to state a certainty; e.g.”

It’s in the context of how ‘must’ is applied. If I claim objects dropped from height that free-fall must eventually strike the ground, that is a fact as we know it since it is based on scientific fact. However, if I use ‘must’ as an inference, as in global warming must be caused by GHGs absorbing IR, that is an opinion and not a scientific statement based on fact.

Your claim was that adding GHGs to the atmosphere must alter heat distribution. There is no direct proof of that, it is an allegation based on the fact CO2 will absorb IR in a controlled laboratory context.

However, the IR absorbed says nothing about heat distribution. I don’t think that has ever been measured. IR is not heat and the distribution of IR does not correspond with the distribution of heat, which is related to mass.

In the state of Colorado, it is unlawful for someone to represent themselves as an engineer, to use the terms “engineer” or “engineering” in titles or offer to perform engineering services unless they are registered as professional engineers with the department of regulatory agencies – and possess the education, experience, credentials and qualifications that entails. Should their work fail they can be held personally responsible for the damages, injuries and death – ergo insurance.

On the other hand, some unemployed aroma therapist, highway flagman or beach bum (sound familiar?) with the time and inclination to spend hours on Wiki reading science articles without comprehension of the constraints and limitations, no formal training and no practice in the actual applications presume themselves to have gathered some kind of expertise in physics, chemistry, heat transfer, thermodynamics, etc.

It’s like following the rules and buying that Super Bowl ticket only to have some weasel sneak in over the wall and enjoy the benefits without paying the cost, getting a “participation” diploma for their “special” status instead of performing the work.

nick…”On the other hand, some unemployed aroma therapist, highway flagman or beach bum (sound familiar?) with the time and inclination to spend hours on Wiki reading science articles without comprehension of the constraints and limitations, no formal training and no practice in the actual applications presume themselves to have gathered some kind of expertise in physics, chemistry, heat transfer, thermodynamics, etc.”

Are you trying to say that a layman cannot begin reading books, consult with experts, and not eventually raise his understanding of science to a level equivalent to a Ph.D?

Michael Faraday, who had little formal education, contributed mightily to science. He is referred to as a scientist. If I had a degree in math, like Gavin Schmidt at GISS, I would not want to debate Faraday on electromagnetic theory in his day.

Edison was another one, having little formal education and being taught by his mother.

Anyone can be a scientist as long as he/she abides by the scientific method.

I have studied engineering formally and I know that anyone who has the right material to study, and even average intelligence, should have no problem understanding most science to a high level.

Engineering, which is one of the toughest courses at university, both in work load and in level of difficulty academically can be handled by a person of average intelligence who is willing to apply himself/herself.

There’s no reason why a layman could not study the same material and absorb it.

A major problem at university is psychological pressure. There is tremendous pressure to study 7 different courses in engineering then regurgitate what one has learned in exams where questions are deliberately stated to confuse and mislead. Examiners don’t want everyone getting 100% on exams, they want a Bell curve distribution.

In engineering, we were told that exam questions are intentionally presented so an average student can get enough marks to pass by answering the first part successfully. The second part is made more difficult so an in-depth understanding of the material being tested is clearly understood.

Combine all that with a time constraint and you have a recipe for mistakes.

The questions are also presented so they must be read very carefully. Even question which are not intended to mislead are sometimes poorly thought out so as to have multiple interpretations, only one of which is the one desired by the examiner.

A person with considerable leisure time does not experience that pressure. He/she is free to study and his/her own pace.

In math, we studied it inside out to a great depth. We covered calculus of triple integrals, differential equation theory, linear algebra, vector calculus, and complex number theory. Only a fraction of that math is required to understand certain facets of science and a layman could focus on the essentials only.

That would cut down immensely on the time required to learn. Same with physics, thermodynamics, chemistry or whatever the course of study required.

It is said that mastery of the piano requires some 10,000 hours of study and practice. That’s a bit over 25 years. However, that covers the most complex music required. If you just wanted to learn rock piano, it would likely take 10 years to master it. If you focused only on campfire songs, you could likely become proficient in a year or so of daily practice.

I am sure similar numbers could be found for the mastery of basic physics or math. A person could learn enough to ask very uncomfortable questions of the experts in a few years of serious study.

It is incumbent on skeptics to learn what they can so they can distinguish bs from truth, especially bs spouted by alarmist authority figures.

I think you are loading it deep when you make this claim: “In math, we studied it inside out to a great depth. We covered calculus of triple integrals, differential equation theory, linear algebra, vector calculus, and complex number theory.”

Highly doubtful you did any of this in reality. You are not able to grasp the geometry of the Inverse Square Law or calculate radiant flux from graphs.

Be honest. You have never taken any higher level math other than basic math. You never actually went to a University to study engineering. You learn all you science from blogs and consider this expert knowledge. I would think the reality is you went to some trade school and learned how to repair electronic equipment. I do not see any evidence of any higher level learning in any of your posts. I see lots of made up fiction and opinions. I do not see the slightest math ability in any of your posts. Nor do I expect to see any. Sorry I think you just make up everything.

Just as I designed and performed a modest experiment to demonstrate that the ideal BB 396 W/m^2 upwelling from the surface that powers the GHE is not possible here is a proposed demonstration experiment that “net” radiation between cold and hot surfaces is likewise incorrect.

Where does “net” theory suggest that if you have two heaters inside a steel cube that the wattage would go down (1000-400). I do not follow what you mean by “net” theory and why you think it means that the energy of each heater is subtracted? I have never seen anything like this in the theory of two way energy transfer. I think maybe explain where you got this idea from. Not in any textbook. Maybe it is a blog version of Net energy transfer theory?

I think I know how you are incorrectly interpreting the theory but I do not know why you would choose to do such a thing. Not very logical.

I think you are going by the fact if you have two plates facing each other, one emitting 1000 watts toward the other and the other emitting 400 watts to the 1000 watt one you have an exchange of 600 watts? That is NOT what the theory states of claims! The 1000 watt plate would only lose a NET energy of 600 watts from its surface, it would not emit 600, it would heat up until it was again emitting 1000 watts from that surface. I think you have really got a scrambled understanding of NET energy transfer. I am not sure I can help you unravel your incredible distortions!

I am still not following your logic or reason at all and I disagree with you completely that “GHE doesn’t exist”

You have two heaters inside a steel cube that has a one square meter surface from which it can radiate from (the other sides are heavily insulated). Is this correct?

If you have two heaters on and one produced 1000 watts and the other 400 watts the exposed steel side would reach a temperature where it was emitting 1400 Watts.

I have zero idea where you come up with this missing energy that needs to be replaced. You certainly do not understand heat transfer. I think you should stick to mechanical engineering. You are probably very good at that. Your knowledge of heat transfer and what “Net” radiant heat transfer means seems to be lacking in the extreme. I wish you would step back and realize you don’t know what you are talking about at all!

nick….from your link…”Heat is energy in motion flowing from a hot source to a cold sink transferring energy to its surroundings through various modes: conduction, convection, latent and radiation”.

When I saw the photo in the top left, at first I thought it was a face with a long, pointy beard. On closer examination, it revealed your face under a white hard hat. ☺

I agree with your point about AGW in principle but your sentence above makes no sense to me.

Heat is not energy in motion, that is an obfuscation presented by people who have abstracted heat into a concept. Heat is the energy associated with atoms in motion. Since energy in motion is called kinetic energy, heat becomes the kinetic energy associated with atoms.

I’ve had this out with Ball4, who claims heat is a measure of energy in transit. He fails to understand that the energy to which he refers is heat.

Ball4 confuses kinetic energy with the forms of energy involved. Kinetic energy is a generic name for any energy in motion. It’s not an energy per se, it’s a reference to the current state of energy, either static, as potential energy, or moving, as kinetic energy.

Think about it. When you have a hotter body in contact with a cooler body, heat flows between them by conduction. It is not simply energy flowing it’s the energy associated with atoms making up the body.

If you apply a flame to the hotter body, both conduction and convection come into play. At the same time the hotter body is conduction heat to the cooler body, it is radiating to the environment.

The radiation is no longer heat. A conversion takes place in electrons of the atoms at the surface so that heat is converted to electromagnetic energy. The body cools as the conversion takes place.

When kinetic energy is applied to motion in atoms, either externally as through a gas, or internally as vibrations between atoms in a solid, it’s only a reference to the state of thermal energy.

Kinetic energy describes energy in motion, not heat.

It’s the motion of atoms that is heat. The hotter they are the faster they move externally, or the more they vibrate internally.

That’s because there is a direct equivalence between heat and work. Internally, work is the motion of atoms as they vibrate in their lattices. That is mechanical energy. Heat is the energy that causes the atoms to vibrate harder and converts directly to work.

As Clausius described it, when you add heat to a substance, it is used up by the atoms and converted to work. The sum of the two internally, heat and work, is the internal energy.

No one knows what energy is. It is defined as the capacity to do work. If that energy is thermal energy, it has the capacity to do work in atoms. Electrical energy, can do the same but it is confined to electrons in atoms.

In fact, in a conductor, both heat and electrical charges are transferred by valence electrons in atoms.

That’s why it makes no sense to claim heat is energy in motion. Heat is a form of energy, not an abstraction for energy.

If you have a mass falling from a cliff under the influence of gravity, it has kinetic energy and that KE describes mechanical energy as work. Work is the distance traveled by the mass under gravitational force.

The moment that mass hits the ground, it’s mechanical energy is converted to heat.

So lets see, the kinetic energy in Earth’s O2 & N2 molecules provided by the Sun have nothing at all to do with warmth we experience on Earth’s surface? My goodness we have so many ‘closet warmests’ holding out for a role for CO2, be it ever so minuscule, who claim to be climate realists or deniers. Truth will prevail and closet warmests, as well as traditional climate scientists, will have to address the NZ discovery (not a theory but a data based discovery) over and over again as it won’t go away. Now I have to say that taking a thought experiment from citizen construction site manager Willis as proof that the published regression equation fitted to NASA data is wrong is a new achievement in science reasoning. Congratulations 🙂

The reason, why the calculation of atmospheric temperatures from gravity is of no interest for the climate problem, is that it addresses the wrong question, and does not address the climate problem.

It virtually assumes the energy content of the atmosphere, when the problem is to find the energy content of the atmosphere when it has not been given. The calculation through gravity does not work by comparing an atmosphere of thirty or sixty years ago with an atmosphere of today, with added carbon dioxide. It cannot consider small additions of carbon dioxide, which set the climate problem.

The great weakness of the official theory but also of NZ is that none of these theories is suitable to properly describe the situation of a theoretical atmosphere without GHG, ie without means of cooling to space. It is perfectly clear, given the asymmetry of the efficiency between conduction and convection, that such an atmosphere would tend towards a high uniform temperature with a very cold boundary layer on the surface.

“a theoretical atmosphere without GHG, ie without means of cooling to space.”

That’s incorrect phi. A real O2 and N2 atm. is without GHG and is with means to cool to space. And as Karl Zeller discusses 3:14pm above, can absorb sunlight also. This sort of atm. would not be able to warm the surface of earth from 255K all the way up to global mean 289K observed today as it would not have enough IR opacity to do so.

That’s the problem folks are having: it can’t be explained by the current ‘theory’, it doesn’t make sense within that theory. Look outside the GHG box just for fun: the analyses of NASA planetary data demonstrate that all planet/moon atmospheres, regardless the presence of green house gases (nor the amount of green house gases), are in a very stable long term thermal equilibrium. There is nothing theoretical about it as it comes from the data not a theory. There is no difference between O2 and CO2 in there abilities to provide planetary atmospheric warmth. Everything you know, understand and expose is correct however it fits inside of a much larger box. Like all the radiative transfer physics are true, etc. but doesn’t fully work when applied within the GHG model/theory. Conduction & convection are very important and are part of the long-term equalizing mechanisms. Yes there are year in year out changes of global mean surface temperatures but these variations are part of the equalization process and limited in range to a few degrees. It’s data verses theory. Take the time to read and study the paper and argue with facts and not theory please. https://t.co/SgWzeWz5WE

1. There can be no temperature gradient in a medium without associated heat flux.
2. There can be no heat flux without temperature difference.

Direct consequences:

The thermal gradient of the atmosphere exists because there is a cold source (GHG).
A priori, any modification of the cold source has an effect on the heat flux and on the thermal gradient.

The official theory poses the unjustified hypothesis of no link between the cold source and the thermal gradient. The consequence of this independence is that it renders the second principle ineffective, eliminates the fundamental distinction between heat and energy and, finally, allows the assimilation of backradiations to heating.

If there is a problem, it lies in this hypothesis. There is no need to question the real but non-calculable effect of GHGs to demonstrate the stupidity of the notion of radiative forcing (which equates backradiations with heating).

Dr. Zeller: “it can’t be explained by the current ‘theory’, it doesn’t make sense within that theory.”

Not sure what is meant by your use of “it”. Please clarify “it” if you want to discuss.

“It’s data verses theory. Take the time to read and study the paper and argue with facts and not theory please.”

Ok, no theory discussion. Data and facts only.

1)The paper discusses & plots in Fig. 4 observed NASA data for Ts/Tna. I have no interest to argue with the paper’s facts for NASA’s measured Ts or Tna.

2)In Fig. 4, the green dots are from measured planetary and moon NASA Ts which include all the natural atm. opacity from absorber mixing ratios, mass extinction coefficients and total surface pressures in each atm. divided by Tna as a function of mean surface pressure. Thus Fig. 4 red curve fit INCLUDES all the natural atm. gas absorbers effect on Ts for each atm. plotted.

3)The paper defines Tna not as a generalized solar system object calculation but a specific one: “To calculate the Tna temperatures for planetary bodies with tangible atmospheres, we assumed that the airless equivalents of such objects would be covered with a regolith of similar optical and thermo-physical properties as the Moon surface.”

The paper states for the new and novel curve fit in the paper Ts/Tna Fig. 4:

“Furthermore, the relative atmospheric thermal enhancement (RATE) defined as a ratio of the planet’s actual global surface temperature to the temperature it would have had in the absence of atmosphere is fully explicable by the surface air pressure alone (Eq. 10a and Figure 4).”

which is not justified by the data and facts because you are using the NASA data that includes all natural information about specific illumination, atm. opacity on Ts and a specific moon in the green dot placement.

For example, if you were to plot the green dot for earth with your suggested O2, N2 atm. a different lower atm. opacity would be obtained and subsequent lower Ts thus the green dot would plot much lower at the same mean surface pressure. An N2 only atm. would plot lower. An Ar atm. even lower close to an ideal transparent atm. Tna would not be an issue.

Tna for Venus and Titan would be an issue because illumination is different so surface emissivity, albedo is different.

As surface pressure is increased in Fig. 4 along the abscissa, the grey absorbers in each atm. allow Ts/Tna to increase – without these absorber opacity increases the 1LOT allows no increase in Ts with increasing pressure as explained in top post by two different authors.

Fig. 4 in the paper has found that the gaseous composition of atmospheres (from measured NASA data) is material to determining long-term average temperatures Ts thus Ts/Tna. I observe many commenters do not recognize this and neither do the conclusions in the paper itself.

This is just a phi strawman fight with the heat term, the correct notion is good physics: the notion of radiative forcing (which equates backradiations with increased surface temperature over surface temperature for no or less backradiations).

You are confusing your own thoughts & theories with what the actual data show. You also seem to have inadequate understanding of the thermodynamic fact that pressure affects temperature DIRECTLY through FORCE and not through IR opacity! The idea that pressure impacts temperature through IR opacity is UNPHYSICAL and not a part of the classical thermodynamics! It’s an “invention” of the Greenhouse concept.

Figure 3 shows that the introduction of atmospheric composition in the predictor variable results in NO meaningful relationship. In other words, the inclusion of any other information in addition to pressure destroys the interplanetary relationship. What does this tell you, Ball4?? It tells you that pressure is the ONLY accurate physical predictor of Ts/Tna!

You seem to have not read the paper carefully, because you do not appear to understand that the formula used to estimate Tna accounts for changes in solar irradiance (distance from the Sun). Our paper also discusses the role of albedo as inferred from the analysis results, which you have apparently not read either.

Please, read the paper several times and mull over it before making conclusions. There is a lot of new information in terms of novel insights that are not available in existing textbooks. This is what NEW SCIENCE looks like!

Ned, the original commenter asked that I just argue with the paper’s data and facts only. Which I did. I’d be glad to also argue the theory with you but for now just look at your data and facts per the request!

The green dots for Ts/Tna plotted in Fig. 4 include the full atm. surface greenhouse effect of each dot with atm. for Ts because they use NASA measured data. There is no possible defense I can see for the paper’s statement:

“Furthermore, the relative atmospheric thermal enhancement (RATE) defined as a ratio of the planet’s actual global surface temperature to the temperature it would have had in the absence of atmosphere is fully explicable by the surface air pressure alone (Eq. 10a and Figure 4).”

The green dots for objects with atm. Ts are placed dependent on object illumination & atm. opacity thus composition contrary to this statement because they use NASA measured data including those physics in Ts. Plain and simple. The green dot placement is NOT fully explicable by total surface pressure alone.

Ball4,
Great, I think you should plot those green dots where you think they should go and see if you can explain and make any sense out of the plot, make your theory fit the plot and get it published. that would be a wonderful contribution.

Commenters have had some time to provide a rebuttal to my pointing out N&Z’s paper statement is not justified by N&Z data and facts so seeing none so far, N&Z statement does not withstand scrutiny. In the meantime, while waiting for any rebuttal comments:

“plot those green dots”

Based on already published literature for Earth atm., radiating N2&O2 atm. would plot at around Ts/Tna 1.303 x p = 100 and an ideal transparent Earth atm. at 1.301 x 100, rounded. An N2 atm. plots in between the two. This all makes reasonable sense based on a first course meteorology text in atm. radiation.

This means the N&Z paper, which plots higher Ts/Tna for Earth at 1.459 x p = 100, shows plainly Earth’s actual global surface temperature to the temperature it would have had in the absence of atmosphere is NOT fully explicable by the surface air pressure alone. The atm. composition of IR grey absorbers also matters.

So Ball4’s point is, if you assume that GHGs make a difference to surface temperature, and calculate what the surface temperature would be in their absence based on accepting that the GHE is correct, then you would be plotting the points in different places. So by taking the conclusion as a premise, you prove the conclusion. Wonderful.

The top post point by two different authors is that N&Z writing that increasing surface pressure alone can increase surface temperatures violates 1LOT.

My point is N&Z statement doesn’t follow from their own facts and data, and is wrong for the same reason as the top post:

“Furthermore, the relative atmospheric thermal enhancement (RATE) defined as a ratio of the planet’s actual global surface temperature to the temperature it would have had in the absence of atmosphere is fully explicable by the surface air pressure alone (Eq. 10a and Figure 4).”

That is NOT fully explicable by the surface air pressure alone. Pistons and cylinders do not inhabit an atmosphere.

“if the thermal gradient is independent of radiative exchanges, where go the energy that accompanies the thermal gradient in an atmosphere without radiative means to cool?”

Every real atm. has the radiative means to cool. Stick to those.

“how do you calculate the modification of entropy due to a radiative forcing?”

In Earth’s atm., observations show Cp changes an insignificant amount with a change in temperature (dT). That observation results in for an ideal constant pressure process is about ok for each small dz in the atm., say from head to toe:

This is not the question. The independence between the thermal gradient and radiative exchange is a theoretical hypothesis which bases the quantitative theory. As a theoretical hypothesis, it must be consistent with the laws of thremodynamics, but it is not consistent with the first principle.

Then just differentiate this eqn. and set the result to zero.

This is not the question either. The concept of radiative forcing represents a thermal flux, and, by definition of this notion of forcing, this thermal flux is not indexed at a temperature. Consequence: the change of entropy by a radiative forcing is undefined. In other words, radiative forcing is not a concept compatible with thermodynamics.

An atmosphere that can not be cooled by radiation is just a theoretical limit that helps to highlight the problem. The link between the thermal gradient and radiative flux is not only a theoretical evidence but in addition it is daily observed, for example in the evolution of the thermal profile between day and night.

That it is necessary to recall this evidence is cocasse.
That the quantitative theory departs from this theoretical and observational evidence without justification is worth ranking it in pseudoscience.

There is an auditorium with six walls. Each wall has five exit doors: conduction, convection, advection, latent and radiation.
Issuing from a black hole inside the auditorium are 600,000 of Maxwell’s demons per hour. 100,000 per hour leave by each wall on their way to another black hole.

Some dither back and forth between the concession stands and exits until their parents make them leave. Some try to sneak into other shows and stay forever. Ushers track them down and toss them out. There is seating and passage space for exactly 600,000; no more, no less.

As the exits are progressively closed the demons must get much more aggressive about leaving, i.e. their energy level and temperatures increase.

Now the doors are closed to the the point that only 3% can leave by each of the five walls (90,000/h) leaving 85% to exit by the sixth wall (510,000.)

As you can well imagine moving five times as many demons as designed makes them really^5 hot. (Works with TSA, too.)

Suddenly Lucifer pops through the black hole with a semi-auto 12-gauge, 32 round drum magazine, and blocks that entire sixth wall.
Demon pandemonium. All 600,000 scatter for exits designed for 90,000. How hot will they get?

Now how to demonstrate this concept with a classical experiment.

As demonstrated in the modest experiment, as the non-radiative and radiative exits are manipulated the temperature of the demons leaving the heating element black hole varies. The more exits that are open the lower the demon temperature. When the non-radiative exits are closed by creating a vacuum, only the radiative exit remains and the demons approximate the theoretical S-B BB temperature.

So, let’s wrap five of the box’s sides in 5 inches of pink foam board, R=25. Based on the relative R values of the six sides (steel U = 43/ft) 3% of the incoming 125 W exits by each of the insulated sides and 85% by the uninsulated face. The kewl demons leave through the 3% exits, really hot demons, 820 F +????, through the uninsulated exit.

Let’s slam that sixth wall closed by flooding it with dry ice or liquid nitrogen.

How hot will those demons have to get now?

How does the surface temperature change on the insulated, uninsulated, heating element change?

To drive all 600,000 through 90,000 worth of doors will the heating element exceed the theoretical BB temperature of 820 F?

Will the input power go higher or lower or neither than the 125W?

Will this alchemy summon true demons and rend the very fabric of the universe?

I haven’t worked thru the details , ie: implemented the equations , of any of the several at least partial derivations and empirical studies showing gravity not spectrum explains both the pressure and the temperature of planetary “lapse rates” . General development of CoSy , http://CoSy.com , takes precedence . See also tho : Modeling the Planet in APL http://cosy.com/CoSy/MinnowBrook2013.html#PlanetTemp . )

But it’s trivial to understand that gravity , not spectrum , explains planetary temperature profiles . As I put it at http://cosy.com/#PlanetaryPhysics :
—
o Particles moving “up” in a gravitational field slow down , ie: cool ;
o Those moving down speed up , ie: heat .

Newton’s Law of Gravity which explains how much faster satellites go in lower orbit also explains how much faster molecules go at the bottoms of atmospheres and thus quantitatively explains the temperature profiles of all planets whatever their atmosphere including the ~ 33c warmer the bottom of our atmosphere is than our radiative balance with the Sun .

The GHG paradigm , excluding the Law of Gravity in violation even of conservation of energy , being false , has thus never presented a testable equation quantifying their asserted spectral “trapping” nor an experimental demonstration of it .
—

There’s no mysterious “trapping” , so violating classical physics ; there’s a balance between gravitational — which computes as a negative — and kinetic energy .

Read Hansen et al’s 1981 paper , https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html , for the original equationless “bait and switch” implicitly using the gravitational lapse rate to argue that more CO2 means the effective altitude of radiation to space will be higher where it’s colder , the WITHOUT EQUATION , claim the entire temperature profile below for spectrum .

The most fundamental “take away” , tho , is that this indisputable gravitational thermal gradient cannot be left out of the computations . In fact , I believe it completes the components for the voxel differential in any model of the planet .

The variation in density is indeed important. Consider an atmosphere whose density stratification is everywhere horizontal and thus totally hydrostatic. In this case, although total potential energy is plentiful, none at all is available for conversion into kinetic energy. Thus, the available potential energy (to change into kinetic energy) depends upon the departure of the density stratification from horizontal.

Since actual winds (hi, lo pressure cell regional weather) are observed to be nearly geostrophic throughout much of the atmosphere, it follows that the kinetic energy (observed in storms) as a result of departure from geostrophic winds is generally small globally which in turn means “those moving down speed up, ie: heat” is generally small globally. Those moving up provide cooling offset & no net change in system internal temperatures over the longer term, globally, which is what is meant by an adiabatic process.

I have never seen any from the the spectral GHG side explaining the progressive increase heat , ie: molecular kinetic energy , just happening to coincide with the gravitational gradient and continuing into the solid substance of the planet , and as N&Z and a few others before them have shown altho perhaps not yet with complete derivation , balancing the difference in gravitational “potential” energy .

A major point in my Heartland presentation , http://climateconferences.heartland.org/robert-armstrong-iccc9-panel-18/ , was that once you calculate the radiative spectral equilibrium , the Divergence Theorem demands the interior have the same mean temperature unless there is an interior source or sink . Well , that “source” is gravity , which computing as a negative as it does , balances the total energy all the way down .

By the simple mechanism that every jiggling molecule hits ones below a little harder and the ones above a little softer .

Every meteorology text discussing atm. thermodynamics will inevitably find it necessary to include ponderous sections belaboring exact and inexact differentials which many students (or any audience) find difficulty in understanding and which, moreover, are unnecessary. What I wrote in plain text can be put in differential form (cf. Lorenz, Manabe so forth) seemingly designed to be confusing as if written by Martians. It is better communications to write plain text if you value success.

Cliff Truesdell, for example, wrote about the use of differentials in thermodynamics with disdain. I urge you to read his stuff. The mathematics of basic thermodynamics in understanding atm. processes is really quite simple compared to EM theory or fluid mechanics such that if you can’t write your expression in plain text, then you don’t understand it.

I also recommend, urge you to read Neil Postman (p. 115) in “The End of Education”: “We can improve the quality of teaching and learning overnight by getting rid of all textbooks….they are boring.” He tells the truth however unpalatable & will not endear Postman to textbook authors.

Also, Karl Menger (an eminent mathematician) over half a century ago gently pointed out that differentials of any kind are unnecessary in teaching thermodynamics but to my knowledge no text book author ever paid him any heed.

You can get by here & in your presentations without differentials if you really value being understood by your audiences.

There are no true Venus’ surface atmospheric LW windows at IR wavelengths greater than 3 micron.

Consider a set of N slabs of Venus atm., each of which below say 10-30km is black (opaque) to longwave radiation from surface i.e. no true IR windows like Earth. All slabs allow shortwave radiation except the bottom one where SW is down to ~17 from 170 W/m^2. Radiative energy balances for the entire system from 10-30km down, then for each slab in succession from the top downward follow:

sigma*T^4 (of the N-jth slab) = (j+1)*S

where S is the net incoming solar radiation to the planet, which is affected by the radiative properties of Venus’ clouds as well as the output of the sun and the Venus-sun distance. You can find this in a beginning text on atm. radiation of your choice. Net Venus downward thermal flux at surface ~15,000 W/m2 when the balance converges (look up LBLRTM papers for details).

This shows that Venus’ downward radiation to the surface increases with opacity from total pressure and increasing concentration of infrared-active gases, accompanied by higher atmospheric (tropospheric) temperatures and leading to lower upper atm. temperatures. Total pressure, CO2 and other absorbing gases (SO2, H2O, CO) largely preclude emission from the surface of Venus throughout the infrared. Even Rayleigh scattering is a significant source of extinction within the lower atmosphere, below the cloud base.

The BIG Question is: Why do high-ranking “climate skeptics” like Dr. Spencer try so vigorously to defend the “Greenhouse theory” at all cost including dismissal of basic thermodynamics and violating the Scientific Method?

Dr. Ned: Your question is a strawman, then you fight your own strawman.

The atm. opacity increase from IR active gases effect on lower and upper atm. temperatures is consistent with 1LOT and the scientific method as you will find in basic meteorological texts and many LBLRTM papers.

You have not successfully defended your N&Z 2017 paper against those that have shown the paper “discovery” is majorly flawed by failing the 1LOT and the scientific method in these comments.

If Earth atm were composed of N2, then, consistent with 1LOT, such an atm. N2 green dot would plot way below the Fig. 4 red curve at about Ts/Tna 1.302 at 100 surface pressure. There is no new macro-scale physical law “discovery” in Fig. 4 which actually shows the known atm. opacity effect on Ts of increasing planetary surface pressure in the presence of IR active gases at various mixing ratios.

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